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> each visual element comes at a cognitive premium to the user. As someone who studied two years of cognitive sciences as part of my degree, this is not necess
by Y-bar 3y ago
> each visual element comes at a cognitive premium to the user.
As someone who studied two years of cognitive sciences as part of my degree, this is not necessarily true. Lack of information can often lead to even more cognitive load as the user then has to imagine virtual scenarios, an cognitive process which is linear. Visual processing however is largely parallel, faster and less consuming, as we have evolved to live in a visually complex and noisy environment.
- rezonant 3y agoFair, but I think there's a middle ground here, obviously an entire screen of buttons on top of a video occludes the content that you want to watch. Even if our visual cortex can handle it, I don't think its desirable if it can be avoided. Of course, admittedly if all you have is a play button and a mute button (or some other very simple player) it probably doesn't matter much. I think Twitch's UI is a good example of where the clutter goes too far. It's loaded with tons of distracting bits and bobs. Makes sense for their business model (most of these relate to how you can spend money on the platform), but from a user perspective it's unpleasant.
- esafak 3y agoDiscord is the same. They target kids, and kids love things that repel adults, like confusing user interfaces.