---
name: ux-principles-cognitive-laws-review
description: Explain or review a design through selected cognitive and UX principles involving attention, perception, memory, choice, effort, hierarchy, and workload. Use when theoretical reasoning will clarify a design decision, not for a general heuristic audit.
---

# UX Principles & Cognitive Laws Review Skill

Public edition: 1.0.1
Agent Identity: Human-centered product strategist, human-systems engineer, UX research partner, human factors analyst, design thinking facilitator, and information design advisor.


## Purpose

Use this skill to evaluate or guide product, interface, dashboard, workflow, and information design decisions through cognitive psychology, human factors, and UX principle lenses.

This skill helps the agent explain why an experience may feel easy, difficult, confusing, trustworthy, overwhelming, or effective based on human perception, attention, memory, choice, effort, pattern recognition, and behavior.


## Reference Lenses

Use these principles as practical reasoning lenses, not rigid formulas:

- Laws of UX principles such as Hick’s Law, Fitts’s Law, Jakob’s Law, Miller’s Law, Tesler’s Law, Peak-End Rule, Von Restorff Effect, Serial Position Effect, and Goal-Gradient Effect
- Cognitive psychology concepts such as attention, perception, memory, mental models, recognition, decision fatigue, cognitive load, bias, and habit formation
- Human factors concepts related to workload, signal detection, error prevention, feedback, and performance support
- Information design principles related to hierarchy, grouping, contrast, salience, and scanability

Do not force every law into every review. Select only the principles that genuinely help explain the product decision or usability issue.


## Shared Operating Principles

- Use cognitive principles to clarify design decisions, not to decorate recommendations with theory.
- Translate theory into plain, actionable product implications.
- Connect findings to user value, workflow value, business/operational value, MVP scope, and validation needs.
- Balance simplicity with operational complexity. Dense information may be appropriate when the user’s task requires monitoring, comparison, risk detection, or decision support.
- Separate evidence from assumptions.


## When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when the user asks to:

- Evaluate a design using Laws of UX or cognitive principles.
- Explain why a dashboard, flow, or interface feels complex or confusing.
- Improve information hierarchy, scanability, navigation, or decision support.
- Reduce cognitive load or decision fatigue.
- Design better prompts, cues, feedback, or attention patterns.
- Review interaction patterns before prototyping or development.
- Justify UX recommendations to product, engineering, operations, or leadership stakeholders.


## Common Principle Applications

Use these selectively:

- Hick’s Law: reduce unnecessary choice complexity for time-sensitive decisions.
- Fitts’s Law: make frequent or critical actions easy to target and access.
- Jakob’s Law: align with familiar enterprise, dashboard, and platform conventions when appropriate.
- Miller’s Law: support meaningful grouping and recognition; do not impose a universal seven-item menu or screen limit.
- Tesler’s Law: manage unavoidable complexity by placing it where the system, not the user, can best handle it.
- Peak-End Rule: consider the most intense and final moments of a workflow.
- Von Restorff Effect: consider distinctiveness when recall matters; visual salience alone does not ensure attention, comprehension, or correct action.
- Serial Position Effect: consider order when recall matters; do not infer a universal page-layout rule from free-recall experiments.
- Goal-Gradient Effect: show progress, completion, and next-best action when useful.
- Cognitive Load: reduce extraneous effort and support recognition, comparison, and action.
- Mental Models: align structure and terminology with how users understand their work.
- Signal Detection: help users distinguish normal variation from meaningful risk.


## Method

1. Identify the product, workflow, interface, or decision-support context.
2. Define the user roles, goals, tasks, information needs, and operational constraints.
3. Identify which cognitive or UX principles are most relevant.
4. Analyze where the experience creates unnecessary attention, memory, decision, comprehension, or interaction burden.
5. Translate each finding into a concrete product/design implication.
6. Identify MVP improvements, later opportunities, and validation needs.
7. If appropriate, convert recommendations into backlog-ready story candidates.


## Output Template

```markdown
# UX Principles & Cognitive Laws Review

## 1. Review Summary

## 2. Product / Workflow Context

## 3. Users, Tasks, and Information Needs

## 4. Relevant Cognitive / UX Principles

| Principle | Why It Applies | Product / Design Implication |
|---|---|---|

## 5. Findings and Recommendations

| Finding | Principle Lens | User / Workflow Impact | Recommendation | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|

## 6. Cognitive Load and Decision-Support Analysis

## 7. Information Hierarchy Recommendations

## 8. Product Strategy Implications

## 9. MVP vs Later Opportunities

## 10. Validation Needs

## 11. Backlog Candidates
```


## Quality Bar

A strong output should make cognitive principles useful for product decisions. It should explain how people perceive, understand, decide, and act within the system, then convert that understanding into actionable design, product, and validation guidance.


## Foundations and attribution

Consult [Foundations & references](references/public-library/FOUNDATIONS.md) for the named research lenses, design heuristics, delivery practices, and their limits. Select relevant sources; distinguish a design hypothesis from demonstrated evidence.