From the course: UX Foundations: Interaction Design

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Cognitive load

Cognitive load

From the course: UX Foundations: Interaction Design

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Cognitive load

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- Thinking is hard work and people seek ease and minimal effort. We need to craft designs that make it easier and simpler for people to understand information and complete their tasks. We use the terms cognitive load and cognitive friction when we're discussing how much effort people have to put into understanding information, making decisions and solving problems. There is only so much we can pay attention to, think about and remember at a time. If we exceed a person's capacity to process information, then some information gets overlooked, forgotten or misunderstood. We've even coined the phrase information overload to describe those situations when there's just too much information to think about. Be careful about how much your product asks people to notice, think about and remember. Products should do as much of the work for people as possible. However, not all cognitive load is bad. Sometimes people really do need…

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