How Google search result page is designed to reduce users’ cognitive load
We are currently in the generation of impatient users. Users don’t read again, they skim. And they don’t skim to understand, they skim to judge. They skim to take split-second decisions. They skim to take decisions without an afterthought.
As a designer, one of my monthly tasks has always been to review existing digital products — mostly by the Tech Giants — and identify the underlying User Experience (UX) principles they had gone through in the process of building the product. There are a number of UX Design principles that can be found on Google Search Page. From my review, some of these principles implemented are that of Hick’s Law, Doherty Threshold, Law of Proximity, and Law of Uniform Connectedness.
However, this article is not focused on examining how these UX laws mentioned above are implemented, it is rather focused on the Google Search Result Page and how color variations are aiding users to understand the past and the future of their search results and how this understanding has helped to reduce their cognitive load.
To begin with, what do you understand by “cognitive load”? Or let me ask with humor, do you as well consider the mental health state of the users when designing for them? Before we go too far with this, Cognitive load refers to the amount of working memory resources used. To break this down in my own terms with context to UX, cognitive load is the amount of mental effort used by a user in processing information. This means the more overwhelming information becomes, the slower the user processes it.
This overwhelmingness (information overload) does not only mean having a junk load of information on a Page without an appropriate layout. It can also mean letting the user reprocess already processed information, thereby overworking the user’s Working Memory. If you want to read more on Cognitive load, what causes it and how you can design to reduce it for users, here is a link that will help with that.
Google Search Result Page
When users enter a prompt to search for information on Google, one of two things happen, either they are looking to access information that is relatively new to them or they are looking to access the information they have already come by. Also when users search for information on Google, they vary their prompts with the expectation of getting different search results each time they do so.
Here’s a description for your understanding: You want to know who Malik Kolade is and you head to Google to search “Malik Kolade”. The results Google Search Result page will show you are like those in the image above. However, if you are not satisfied and you change the prompt to “Is Malik Kolade a person?” then it will show you different results like in the image below, some of which may contain results from earlier prompt. Now imagine you have visited some pages from the earlier results and with the new results, assuming you cannot tell between the pages you have visited and the ones you have not, you click on the same link only to realize that you have visited the page before. If you do not feel contempt as a user, you might be close to hissing for the time you have wasted.
This shows that it is really a daunting experience if the user cannot tell between actions they have performed already and the ones they haven’t. To bring this to the Google Search Result page, it really would have been a pain in the neck if users are not able to differentiate between the pages they have already visited and the ones they haven’t.
Users process every piece of information you show them, and they want to do this within the shortest time possible. A report from Klipfolio states that a good benchmark for Average Time spent on a Page is 52 seconds. Putting this into the context of the Google Search Result page where users are merely scanning for important keywords or phrases in order to decide whether to click on a link or not, the time spent may not be up to 52 seconds. Thus, putting mechanisms in place to help users discern information quickly is one of the best experiences given on the Google Search Result page.
And how has Google done this?
In 2004, Jacob Nielsen wrote about this generally within the context of Navigational Design. The concept of changing the color of visited links which has been a part of Web browsing since Mosaic arrived in 1993. This concept is understandable by a lot of users, making it utterly standard in Navigational Design. The use of different colors to distinguish visited links for users has helped them avoid unintentionally revisiting same pages repeatedly, and reduced the time it takes them to process links that yields fruitless or fruitful result in their search. Thus, this helps them reduce cognitive load, the mental effort it takes the users in discerning visited links from unvisited ones.
