Hick’s Law
Date: 2026-08-17
Decision time rises with the number of options, logarithmically rather than linearly. The logarithm is the part people drop, and it’s what makes the popular version — “fewer options is always better” — wrong.
Hick’s law states that the time to choose between equally-likely alternatives increases with the logarithm of the number of alternatives:
Where n is the number of options and b is a constant depending on the person and the task.
Working it
Taking b = 0.2 seconds for illustration:
options (n) log₂(n+1) time
2 1.58 0.32s
4 2.32 0.46s
8 3.17 0.63s
16 4.09 0.82s
32 5.04 1.01s
In plain terms: doubling the options adds a fixed amount of time, not double the time. Going from 2 to 4 costs about the same as going from 16 to 32.
That’s the finding people misquote. The relationship is real and it’s much gentler than “reduce your options” implies — moving from 16 choices to 8 saves under a fifth of a second on this model.
The conditions it assumes
The law holds under assumptions that are frequently false in a real interface:
| The law assumes | The reality |
|---|---|
| Options are equally likely | They’re not — one is usually the obvious candidate |
| The person is choosing | They’re often scanning a label |
| Options are directly comparable and visible | They’re in a grid, below the fold, in a menu |
| No prior knowledge | People know what they came for |
When options are scannable and well-labelled, people don’t evaluate all of them. They filter to a few candidates and choose among those, which is why a 200-product category page isn’t 200 times harder than a 1-product one.
What it actually implies
- Grouping beats deleting. 32 options in 4 labelled groups of 8 is two easy decisions, not one hard one. This is the practical form of the law, and it’s how navigation and filtering work
- Structure matters more than count. A well-organised long list beats a short disorganised one
- It applies most to genuinely equal options — a row of identical-looking buttons is where the cost is real
- Time isn’t the only cost. The harder problem with too many options is Choice Overload — the decision getting abandoned entirely, which is a behavioural effect rather than a timing one and matters far more commercially
Where it’s misapplied
- “Remove navigation items to improve conversion.” Sometimes true, and not because of Hick’s law — a sub-second timing effect doesn’t drive conversion. If removing items helps, it’s because the remaining ones got clearer
- Cutting product range. Range breadth is a commercial decision. The answer to a large catalogue is filtering and search, not fewer products — Faceted Filtering
- Justifying a design opinion. The law is quoted far more often than its magnitude would justify, usually to support a decision made for other reasons
The honest position
Hick’s law is real, well-established, and small. It’s a reason to group and label rather than a reason to delete.
The effects that actually move commercial outcomes are Choice Overload and Cognitive Load — abandonment and effort — and both are about the quality of the decision rather than the milliseconds it takes.
The useful sibling is Fitts’s Law, which governs the physical act of hitting the target once chosen. Together they describe the two halves of an interaction: deciding, then doing.