There’s an old book on website design titled Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.
It’s a good book, and if you’re involved in design, you should read it. But that basic concept applies to more than web design.
“Cognitive load” is a concept used to measure how much mental effort is required to process information and make decisions.
Here’s a little story about “cognitive load.”
One night, years ago, I was on my way from work to an evening class. I was exhausted. I wanted a candy bar and a cup of coffee so the sugar, fat, and caffeine would get me through the lecture. I pulled into some rinky dink road-side shop expecting an old pot of bad coffee and a Snickers bar. They had 10,000 types of candy bars and 14 varieties of coffee.
For the first and only time in my life, I wished I was in the Soviet Union and there were only two choices: “candy bar” and “coffee.”
I eventually got my Snickers and coffee, but seeing all those choices felt like a wet, heavy blanket of despair descending on my soul. I’m normally a very decisive person, but I was tired I simply didn’t want to have to make a decision.
“However,” you may be thinking, “people like to have options. There’s a reason why there are 14 varieties of coffee.”
That’s right, and you have to find the appropriate balance between the “choice paralysis” when there are too many options and the frustration when there are too few. Phones seem to have managed this by putting relatively few options up front with an endless array of options deep in the settings. It’s rather amazing how much you can customize on your phone.
Personalization is one way publishers can lessen the cognitive load on their readers. Consider Spotify. If I want to listen to a song, I don’t have to wade through the entire universe of music. Spotify recommends things that I will probably like.
Here are some ways you can use this concept to make your service easier to use.
Filter out what’s irrelevant to the reader. Don’t try to answer every question or provide every option on every page. Focus on what 80 percent of the people want. Make the long tail stuff accessible, but not prominent.
Align choices with the reader’s interests. Use a customer data platform to find out what customers want and make those activities easier for that customer.
Eliminate friction. Make decisions as easy as possible. The question is not necessarily how many clicks or how many pages the user needs to endure, but how easy each of them are.
Make things familiar and predictable. If people are used to seeing a feature a certain way, do it that way. Salt is still salt if it’s in a square box, but when people are looking for salt, they’re looking for a cylinder, not a box. Don’t contradict their expectations.
Following these suggestions can help you lower the cognitive load of using your service and make people feel more comfortable with it.
Note, this post is a modified version of an article in the August issue of The Krehbiel Letter. If you’re interested in a free subscription, please visit this page.
