What Users Actually Do: The Overload Tax

Because real behavior beats best guesses.

Hick’s Law is a simple idea with big consequences: the more choices people have, the longer it takes them to make a decision. I often explain this by asking the person to imagine they need to buy ketchup, and now they’re standing in the ketchup aisle at the grocery store. If they’re not already committed to a specific brand or type, how many options do they have to choose from? The answer is almost always “too many.” It can take them more time to determine what might be the best choice for their needs.

Library websites are especially vulnerable to this problem because libraries do a lot. Catalogs, databases, events, meeting rooms, research help, library cards, ebooks, museum passes, genealogy tools, printing, outreach services, and on and on. Every one of these things matters to someone. But when everything is treated as equally important on the homepage or in the main navigation, the result isn’t helpfulness; more likely, it’s outright chaos.

That does not mean every website needs to be stripped down to three giant buttons. It does mean that when we throw too many options at people at once, we make them work harder than they should. This is what UX (User Experience) pros call “too much cognitive load.” Think of every additional option as an overload tax on your site users’ brains you probably didn’t mean to collect.

This is where Hick’s Law becomes useful. A homepage with twenty competing calls to action does not give users “more access.” It gives them more decisions to make before they can even get started. Which button is for ebooks? Is “research” the same as “databases”? Is “services” where printing lives? Each unclear choice adds more friction. Enough friction, and users typically give up and assume the site does not have what they need.

For library websites, the answer is not to hide everything. The answer is to organize choices around what users are most likely trying to do. Put the highest-demand tasks in predictable places. Group related items. Avoid turning the homepage into a bulletin board for every department. Navigation is not dumping ground: it is entirely a decision-making tool for the user.

Hick’s Law reminds us that “more” is not automatically better. More buttons, more homepage panels, and more menu items can create the illusion of usefulness while actually making the site harder to use. A good library website doesn’t make users admire how much the library offers. It helps them find the thing they came for, quickly and without needing to decode the interface first.