Decreasing Cognivite Overhead
There was an interesting article published earlier today over at TC by David Lieb, who is the co-founder and CEO of Bump. I’ll sum it up here for you, and if you feel so inclined you can go ahead and read the full version here.
Cognitive Overhead – What is it?
Certainly, that would bea good place to start. To reference what was said in the article by David Demaree:
Cognitive Overhead — “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at.”
While simplifying things generally is assumed as actions that:
- Minimize number of steps in a process
- Minimize time required
- Minimize # of features
- Minimize elements of each page
- Minimize the # of minimizations (jk ;)).
You may be thinking to youself,
“Gee – is all this simplification really necessary?”
“I mean, it makes sense to me.. so why wouldn’t it to anyone and everyone else?”
STOP RIGHT THERE.
Have you considered for just a moment that the majority of people out there aren’t as tech savvy as you?
ESPECIALLY IF..
You’re a: designer, programmer, blogger, or enthusiast then you’re naturally going to have the upper-hand as far as understanding and comprehending different UI’s regardless of whether they’re on the web or your smartphone. You live and breath it every day, go figure. Fact of the matter is though, with mobile – designing for the mass market is more important than ever.
If you’ve noticed..
Over the last decade or so, large brands have been throwing down some serious $ and effort to simplify not just their UI’s, but also the funnel that users go through (creating fluidity). The exception to this rule of course would be the notorious Facebook which seems to change stuff ALL THE TIME. I hate this new chat heads thing btw.
To sum this all up, I’ll mention the few examples of companies who’ve done a great job at decreasing the cognitive over-head, a ‘not so great’ job, and then an arguable one as well.
Let’s talk QR Codes.
Probably the single most over-hyped invention known in the mobile world, not to mention they’re not even trending amongst consumers (said eMarketer). The thought of investing in integrating QR codes into your marketing mix is very debatable, but if it were ME – I wouldn’t waste the $.
“Designed to check the simplicity boxes of speed, ubiquity, and small number of steps, QR codes really dropped the ball on cognitive overhead.
“So it’s a barcode? No? It’s a website? Ok. But I open websites with my web browser, not my camera. So I take a picture of it? No, I take a picture of it with an app? Which app?””
You get the point.
Shazam.
This one, is a very good example of taking an extremely complex technology and integration thereof and making it appear to work like magic. You press the button, it starts listening (and visually indicates doing so) when it’s done it buzzes, and you’ve now discovered a song which just moments before you weren’t able to recognize. It’s a mobile app that really is as good as it gets when it comes to minimal cognitive overhead.
Facebook.
So, like I said earlier..while they certainly started off ‘simple’ Facebook has been hard at work making an extremely strong push towards mobile, and distinguishing themselves as a “mobile first” company. Most recently they added “chat heads” as one of their newest features on the iOS app, which was originally part of the Facebook Home package launched on Android earlier this month. The thing about Chat Heads is that if you talk to more than a few people your whole right hand side of your screen is going to be taken up by these little circles, and the only way to get rid of them is to: HOLD THEIR HEADS with your Finger, and drag them to the bottom of your screen. I relate it to having a forced object dock like on Mac.
As far as I know, there is no way to disable the chat-heads function, (unfortunately) so we’re kind of stuck with it for now.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure that your app is so easy to use that whether someone is 5, or 85 they get it. Don’t make it too strenuous on the mind. If you’d like to explore this subject more, then feel free and take a look at the original article linked above.
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
