What is cognition and why does it matter to my website?

When I think about cognition, I literally visualise cogs turning in the brain. That might sound daft, but perhaps not if you also see the brain as a biological machine. Cogs aside, cognition broadly refers to knowledge and understanding, and there are a bunch of psychological principles which we use to conceptualise how we process information. In the context of website design these include, but are not limited to, cognitive barriers and cognitive load, which we can use to significantly improve your website’s user experience (UX).

Let's think about cognitive psychology

When I say knowledge and understanding, what I really mean is human mental processes such as attention, perception, memory and problem solving to name a few. Cognitive psychology, then, which is simply the study of these processes, is relevant to your website because we can leverage these processes to produce intuitive interfaces. You tend not to even notice intuitive interfaces as designers who pay attention to usability, navigation, readability and accessibility lean into cognitive psychology to enable businesses and users alike to achieve their goals quickly and without friction.

What are Cognitive barriers?

What on earth does friction have to do with my website, I hear you cry. Two words - cognitive barriers. These are things which slow down your users when taking an action that is required to achieve their goals; and they slow your users down because they require them to process information. The more information they need to process, the longer they are likely to need to complete their goal. 

There are three ways we can conceptualise cognitive barriers:

• Number of steps I expect to take
• Perceived length of steps
• Perceived difficulty of steps

Although the above may seem like a no-brainer, there’s more to it than reducing the number of clicks or making something shorter to improve the user experience. As a Designer you need to tap into cognitive and behavioural psychology to understand when to add/remove, lengthen/shorten, and increase/decrease steps. Too little and you potentially lose trust and loyalty or create a laborious scrolling experience. Too many and you’re left with you risk your users’ attention.

Hello and goodbye, Cognitive Load

So then, whilst cognitive barriers are the perceived obstacles in the way of your users, cognitive load essentially refers to the amount of working memory needed to overcome said obstacles. This means that, although the obstacles may stay the same, cognitive load is subjective and it pays - quite literally - to know where your users struggle or excel in achieving their goals on your website.

There are three types of cognitive load that designers must consider when designing a website:

Awareness of these concepts allow us, as designers, to leverage cognitive psychology to improve usability and accessibility of digital experience. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. The trusty accordion, for instance, utilises a concept called ‘progressive disclosure’ to provide the least amount of information necessary until the user interacts with it. Burger menus - another common design pattern - tap into germane cognitive load and reduce the need to process information and learn how the interface functions. Chunking and signposting content throughout your website also improves the scannability of your website and reduces the cognitive effort required to process information.

In summary, understanding cognition is crucial to creating an intuitive interface and improving your user experience. By considering cognitive load and cognitive barriers, UX designers can optimise user interfaces, present content effectively, and reduce cognitive overload, making it easier for users to achieve their goals. 

Get in touch with a member of the team to find out how we tap into cognitive psychology and supercharge your user experience.

Sources

https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/cognitive-psychology-for-ux-design 

https://uxplanet.org/cognitive-psychology-in-ux-cd7afed87886 

https://uxmag.com/articles/cognition-the-intrinsic-user-experience 

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/09/reducing-cognitive-overload-for-a-better-user-experience/