Hick's law
Decision time generally grows as unfamiliar, similarly weighted choices pile up. Long flat menus feel slow for a reason.
See it
What it is
Hick's law (properly the Hick-Hyman law) says the time it takes to pick from a set of options grows with the number of options, logarithmically rather than linearly. A menu of 12 unfamiliar items isn't twice as slow as 6, but it is slower, and the reader feels the extra weight before they feel the extra power.
Reach for it when a screen has grown a wall of equal-weight choices: a settings page, a nav bar, a pricing table with nine plans, an onboarding step that asks everything at once. The fixes are grouping (chunk 20 items into 4 labelled sets of 5), progressive disclosure (hide the advanced half behind 'More options'), and a smart default that turns a decision into a confirmation.
The common misreading: 'always show fewer things'. Hick's law assumes unfamiliar, equally likely options being considered one by one. It doesn't govern a well-sorted list you scan, an alphabetical country picker, or a keyboard someone already knows. Cutting a power user's toolbar in half in the name of Hick just hides the thing they came for.
Ask AI for it
Restructure this screen using Hick's law. Start by naming the one primary task and making its control the obvious first choice. Group the remaining equal-weight options into meaningful user-facing categories with labels people would actually use, promote any choice you have real evidence people take most often, and progressively disclose the genuinely advanced options behind a collapsed 'Advanced' or 'More options' section. Do not impose a fixed item cap, and do not invent usage percentages: for each thing you demote, state the evidence behind it, or say plainly that the evidence is missing and the call is a guess. Keep every option discoverable and reachable, and show the before and after side by side.