Key takeaways
Make key information and key actions visually distinct.
Use contrast sparingly: if everything stands out, nothing does.
Origins
Also called the isolation effect, it is named after the German psychiatrist and paediatrician Hedwig von Restorff (1906–1962). In a 1933 study she showed participants lists of similar items with one distinctive, isolated item, and memory for that item was better than for the others.
In practice
- Give the primary button a colour that no other element on the screen uses.
- Highlight the recommended plan in a pricing table.
- Keep strong colour and motion for what is really important.
Further reading
- Psychology in Design (Part 1) — Andri Budzinskiy | Medium.com
- The Psychology Principles Every UI/UX Designer Needs to Know — Thanasis Rigopoulos | Marvel
- Von Restorff Effect on Wikipedia — Wikipedia
- Von Restorff Effect on Laws of UX — Jon Yablonski
The illustration is our own, drawn after the idea of this law’s card in Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski.
