Design Principles for Reducing Cognitive Load

This article is interesting, but in case you're like me and read comments before articles to get a tl;dr, this article is about web design. I was personally hopeful it was about managing teams or projects, which does have analogous lessons, but it's specifically about web design.

Disclaimer: no longer a web designer; take my opinion on the substance of the article lightly.

Cause 4. Too much information.

Cause 5. Multichannel redundancy (i.e., reading something to someone as they try to read similar text)

Cause #0: implicit information.

Implicit information may force people to guess what is being said. Turns a simple thing into a riddle.

Cause #-1: lack of consistency

When something is designed in a different way, people try to infer why it's different. If they turn out to be the same thing, it pisses people off.

Almost all of the points in the article also apply to programming languages!

There is much to add to this list. For instance the task of writing concise copy. It can take a lot of work to get there. A simple form may require only a few sentences to guide someone through but getting everything in a logical order can require several iterations. The finished result may be the result of many, many tests. Sometimes only working with the form and building the backend for it is how to get to the result. In fact you need to know that problem space to get there. The finished results should look effortless and simple but there may be many commits leading to getting there.

I saw a talk on Friday about designing interfaces for people with locked in syndrome. It turned out that to be effective they needed to design for increasing cognitive load rather than reducing it.

As everyone knows, how and when to employ a principle is the key!

Says a website with hover share buttons and distracting color choices. I had trouble focusing on mobile because this site had so much going on.