<story><title>Cognitive Overhead, Or Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/20/cognitive-overhead/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jwilliams</author><text>I was all primed to disagree with this article, but it&apos;s a pretty well placed piece.&lt;p&gt;I think an interesting pivot occurs when your start hitting the limits of working memory. Posting a photo is usually pretty immediate and doesn&apos;t max out your working memory.&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I worked on a project to convert a Loan Application system from a VT100 &quot;green screen&quot; terminal to a Web Interface.&lt;p&gt;The Web Interface was actually pretty good, but it required too much navigation and too much working memory. We tried to reduce the number of clicks, but then the pages themselves became too slow and confusing.&lt;p&gt;Finally I got to see someone using the old VT100 app. It was blistering fast, and they supplemented it with codes written on a piece of paper. Crude and it required training, but it was far superior. The main thing was navigation. The codes on the paper were enough of a picture to offload that bit of cognitive processing... With the web interface, as soon as you clicked and had to pause or search - you&apos;d lose the thread.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately too late for that project, but a good lesson for me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cognitive Overhead, Or Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/20/cognitive-overhead/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ricardobeat</author><text>&amp;#62; There isn’t yet much written about cognitive overhead in our field&lt;p&gt;Couldn&apos;t disagree more. Cognitive load is a major element of information architecture and even has an explicit representation in flow charts. Any book on information architecture or UX is half about it.&lt;p&gt;Many if not most decisions in interface design and IA are based on estimating (and reducing) cognitive load - how many options/buttons to present, how deep navigation should go, how to group things, splitting up an action flow in order to reduce the memory/choices needed...&lt;p&gt;The example given for QR codes is also wrong - &quot;So it’s a barcode? No? ...&quot; - it &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; a barcode and you need a barcode scanner/app, everyone knows how barcodes work. QR codes are not the best thing around, but IMO they didn&apos;t catch on for a lack of interest from manufacturers (no native support), not because it&apos;s overly complex.</text></comment>