Cognitive strain — Don’t let it go to your head!
Why UX practitioners sometimes behave irrationally?
Cognitive strain is by no means a good thing, it basically means that a person is strained by having to do multiple computations in his head.
A lot of UX practitioners seem to live in fear of over straining their users. In this article I would like to help all these UX professionals sleep better at night knowing that it’s OK and to worry less about the potential harm of causing cognitive strain on your users.
First of all, calm down and relax..
Close your eyes and breath deeply and in your mind imagine your users blissfuly using the last thing you designed.. Their gentle fingers navigating through your interface gracefully and effortlessly.. They are satisfied and will recommend it to their friends.. feels good doesn’t it? And after all the hard work, you deserve it!
Should you be concerned?
There are many ways to make people do more cognitive work than they should be doing. As an example, Nielsen Norman Group published this article recently about some things to look out for, specifically in navigation.
The usual suspects you should look out for include information intensive pages, complex navigation, too many options, too many steps or decisions to make.
Cognitive strain leads to frustration, unhappiness and ultimately decreases the value of the entire experience.
As UX practitioners you have to make a lot of decisions that may solve or prevent one issue but may also cause others. You also have to compromise a certain percentage of your users to cater to others. It’s a world of compromises and it’s almost impossible to imagine a perfect product.
So how do you deal with all this?
The good news is that you are not a bad person!
Your efforts have probably done more good than harm. Overall, if you did things with good planning and thought you have probably decreased the cognitive strain by a significant amount.
Have some confidence in what you design... make confident designs! Users love confident designs!
How to be sure:
- Research your designs
- Research your users
- Research your users using your designs
It’s quite simple and believe me, it will keep your hair from falling and maybe even grow some of it back.
Don’t fall into the cognitive strain trap!
I recently read this article about hollow icons causing more cognitive load than non hollow ones. This article has been well circulated by now and may already have caused people to make some design decisions based of it.
Now, think for a moment how significant this extra cognitive load may be for your users. Is it really that drastic? Will it affect conversion rates, engagement, likability, learnabilty? Will your users leave your service and go to your competitors because of hollow icons?
And most importantly ask yourself: Should I lose any sleep over some bloody hollow icons? I know I definitely won’t :)
Hop on the cognitive strain train!
To end this article with some fun, here are a few fun things you can do with cognitive strain:
Use it as a counter argument in stakeholder meetings:
Use it as an excuse:
Use it to bring down your opponents:
