[PM products] what is cognitive load? How to adjust cognitive load reasonably?

Good design should not be eye-catching , But naturally help users complete tasks , Even users didn't find .

What is cognitive load

Cognitive load It means that the user needs to understand after seeing the interface 、 reflection 、 memories 、 Brain consumption in the calculation process . Don’t make the ink ! Don't let users add extra cognitive load because of thinking .

It looks like this ：

In fact, many buttons in the design on the left of the above figure are used at extremely low frequencies , It exerts great pressure on users 【 load 】, Human brain is not good at dealing with high coincidence , So we need to reduce the user's 【 Cognitive load 】、【 Reasonable adjustment of cognition conforms to 】, Let users successfully complete the task .

Rational adjustment of cognitive load can be adopted ：

1. Less choices （less is more）
2. Disassemble the complex , Step by step .
3. Keep the design consistent .
4. There are clear levels of vision and touch , Help users get information .

Reasonably adjust cognitive load

Less choices

The more choices you have, the less you know what to choose . When users have too many choices , They tend to feel frustrated . Even if a product has all the functions in the world , If you choose too much interface content, it will still make this product look extremely unfriendly .

So in design , We should first implement the first strategy of interaction design ： Reasonable deletion , Subtract first , Eliminate all interference as much as possible .

Complex disassembly , Step by step

Adding steps will lead to the loss of conversion at each step , Therefore, it is not recommended to have a multi-step task path .

But in the actual business , Users are inevitably required to fill in 、 There are many choices , And there must be , At this time, you can sort them out , Group according to the intimacy between steps , Split a large task into multiple subtasks , Show only one small module at a time , In this way, users can easily process a small piece of information at a time , Improve processing efficiency （ Won't users feel cumbersome because of more steps ？）.

Users can easily complete the first step , The probability of entering the second step will be much higher , Because users have paid the cost of silence （ Fewer single page displays , More pages , The amount of content remains the same ）.

Keep the design consistent

The unity of design is the basis of ensuring experience , Because it can reduce the cognitive burden of users as much as possible .

Therefore, designers should use the vision that users are familiar with the product when designing 、 Interactive design , This is why so many manufacturers have their own component libraries , The purpose is to ensure the consistency of design in the process of multiple iterations , Avoid the appearance of alternative pages in the process of team collaboration in each module of the product , The user is suddenly not used to .（ So that's it ）

Visual hierarchy

Clear visual hierarchy can help users better obtain information focus , So as to help users reduce cognitive load , Visually, such as text size , Button size and other distributions need to be divided into levels according to the importance .

summary

By reducing the cognitive load of users, we can actually improve the usability of products , Reduce user learning and operation costs , So that users can use the product smoothly to complete their tasks . The smaller the cognitive load , Higher availability ！