Jon Yablonski has created a site that crisply illustrates
the "Laws of UX" -- some well-known precepts of how people interact with on-screen information. One of my favorite laws, which you see in action all the time in the real world, is the
"Serial Position Effect". As Yablonski describes it ...
The serial position effect, a term coined by Herman Ebbinghaus, describes how the position of an item in a sequence affects recall accuracy. The two concepts involved, the primacy effect and the recency effect, explains how items presented at the beginning of a sequence and the end of a sequence are recalled with greater accuracy than items in the middle of a list. Manipulation of the serial position effect to create better user experiences is reflected in many popular designs by successful companies like Apple, Electronic Arts, and Nike.
(Via
Sarah Drasner)
