Impact of cognitive load in UX Design
Whenever a new product comes in the market, be it a digital or physical one, the success of it depends on many factors like how it looks, how well it works, how well it is designed and many more factors. And for the past few years, the design has been the bigger factor in the successes of modern products both in the digital world and the physical world.
Today, we are going to talk about one such factor that had been neglected at the beginning of the modern world but now has taken the utmost place in the design priorities of the products. Cognitive Load.
Cognitive Load
In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the used amount of working memory resources — wiki
In a simpler way, the Cognitive load imposed by the interface is the amount of mental resources that are being used to use and understand the product.
Cognitive load has a very important role in deciding the usability of the product. And the amount of cognitive load varies as per the age and understanding of the people, like a person of the age of 20 can handle more cognitive load than the person of age 60, but while designing the product we have to consider the whole spectrum of users.
Cognitive load theory differentiates cognitive load into three types:
- Intrinsic — Intrinsic cognitive load is the effort associated with a specific topic
- Extraneous — refers to the way information or tasks are presented to a learner
- Germane-refers to the work put into creating a permanent store of knowledge, or a schema.
Sometimes, because of the high cognitive load, people find some products hard to use and they blame themselves about not being able to use the product but the problem is that the product is giving too much to the users in terms of information, features, and functionalities, which sometimes users don’t need at all. And this makes the product hard to use and leave people frustrated.
The number one reason why Dieter’s Ram is one of the best designers of the world because of the product designed by him were so simpler in looks and easy to use that they put a less cognitive load on the minds of the people.
And one of his principles completely resonates with the cognitive load, which is Good design is as little as possible. He always believed in giving people products that are not just simple but easy to understand and use.
Today we all are aware that Apple’s product’s success has been completely based on the legacy of Dieter’s ram principles.
Search Engine
Examples of the search engine page are the best example of showing the consequences of cognitive load and the reason why google succeeded in the first place.
If you look at some of the search engine pages below, you would find like there is so much on a single screen, which sometimes makes users difficult to search their queries and find answers to.
But we were fortunate enough that someone solved this problem in the first place, and everybody knows the name, Google.
Google removed everything unnecessary from the home page and just gave users a single bar to focus on. And today we know where google is and how other search engines have changed their home page designs to simple ones.
Sometimes product teams and designers try to put everything on a single page, in the hope that users won’t need to jump to a different place but this imposes a cognitive load on the minds and working memory of the people and which makes them frustrated and reduces the overall user experience of the product.
The cognitive load of the product has a direct impact on the usability of the products and overall user experience. And if it is not worked out properly, it could lower down the productivity of the user and consumes a lot of users’ time and mental resources.
So let’s talk about what causes the cognitive load on users.
- Too much content
Sometimes, putting too much content on a single page takes time for the user to understand and decide their next steps. Because when you put so much on the interface of the product, then users find it difficult to find a place to start.
2. Too many options (Hick’s Law)
Giving too many options is not the best option anytime. And in the user experience field, we have this Hick Law which states that time takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Giving too many options can impact the user’s decision-making abilities and make them confused about what to choose and do.
3. Visual Design Inconsistencies and different patterns.
Using too many design elements, like different colours, and typestyle makes users difficult to distinguish between different information on the page, making it difficult for them to understand the different actions and meanings and hence put a cognitive load.
4. Complex features and functionalities
Some teams and designers have this common notion that giving all the features and functionalities to the users would help users in solving their problems, but the reality is a bit different, giving too many features and functionalities are just going to increase their problems and mental load rather than solving any good. Because when you give too much to the users, they become confused and would take more time and mental efforts to use and remember the features of the product.
So there could be many more reasons that can increase the cognitive load on the user memory and we must be focused enough to eliminate these while designing the products.
So, how can we minimize the cognitive load?
- Removing everything unnecessary.
Removing unnecessary information is one of the best ways to improve the usability of the screen and minimize the cognitive load as the user has limited attention and it is always best to give what the user expects. While removing unnecessary, we just have to remember the rule of less is more.
2. Making Hierarchy and proper structuring of the too many options
Sometimes, giving multiple options are the major feature of a certain product, but giving them all is not the best option, rather we can create hierarchy in the choices or create sub-options so that it will take less time and memory for the users to think of the next actions or their next goals.
3. Making the system consistent
Today the different design systems have solved these visual inconsistency problems across the product. Now, every application or website is based on a certain design system which makes them consistent in all places and makes it easy for the user to learn the application and get used to it.
4. Simple features and complexities
Features and functionalities are the backbones of a good product but they need to be self-explanatory and self-understandable. For any product, we need to be careful in designing the features and focused enough to not make them hard to use and understand.
Reducing the cognitive load not only makes the product simple and easy to use, but it has a great impact on the overall user experience of the product. Because when you focus on maximizing user productivity by giving the information they need and designing simple features, then they really feel of using your product. And then the product helps users in achieving their goals.
In the book, Don’t make me think, Steve Krug has clearly stated the reasons why we should not design products which let people think before using them instead it should be responsibility of the teams and designers to design products in such a way that users don’t even have to think before using your products, your product must be self-explanatory and self-understandable.
Don’t try to put a maze for the users, just give them simple ways.
Conclusion
When we focus on the users and research about their day to day life and the problems they face, then we clearly understand how they feel mentally and what they expect from the products. And considering all this, we at NextUX always try to design products that are low on cognitive load and high on maximizing productivity because this not only helped our clients but also helped their users to love their product more and be a productive user.
So, these are some of the points we can consider while solving the problem of cognitive load in any product. We, at NextUX, are always focused on the cognitive load issues and we always try to take it as a major problem to solve while designing the product for clients and so far we have been able to solve this problem for our client's products.
Thank you for reading.
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