Jakob's Law
STR·04 · 4 of 11People spend most of their time on other sites: they arrive carrying expectations your interface didn't set.
traditional Long-standing practice, with no single citable origin. Why: Nielsen’s formulation is an observation about expectation, not a measured law.
The same task, built twice
Both panes below are real interfaces. They respond, they can be got wrong, and each is timed from your first move in it. The times are not a study — two panes, one reader, no controls. They are here to make a difference you can feel into a number you can see, and nothing is recorded or sent anywhere.
Open your basket, then close the panel that appears.
Your basket
Wool throw · £48
Enamel jug · £22
Nothing here is broken. The basket is a lozenge on the left, the logo is on the right, and the close control is a word at the bottom. Every choice is defensible on its own and the set of them is unusable.
Wool throw · £48
Enamel jug · £22
Logo left, basket top-right with a count on it, close as an × in the panel's top-right corner. None of this is better design — it is the same design as everywhere else, which is the entire argument.
What to watch Where your eye went first, and where your hand went first. You have never used either of these sites; the right-hand one you already knew how to use.