Have you ever felt mentally drained after using an app, even if you were just scrolling through social media or playing a game? If so, you’re not alone! Quite often, this feeling can be traced back to a little something called cognitive load. Why certain apps can be overwhelming to our brains, and how we might make our digital experiences more enjoyable.
What is Cognitive Load?
Cognitive load can be described as the amount of mental effort being used in working memory. Think of your brain as a computer. If you open too many programs at once, it starts to get very slow and may even crash. The same happens when you are trying to process too much information at once. Such results in mental fatigue.
The Three Types of Cognitive Load
Intrinsic Load: This is the inherent difficulty of the material that you are working with—say, learning a new language would have a high intrinsic load because you have to remember the vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation rules all at once.
Extraneous Load: This type of load originates from the way information is presented. Information in an app, filled to the brim with lots of buttons, its colors, or even confused navigation, increases extraneous cognitive load. For example, badly designed cooking apps, filled to the brim with unending pop-ups, make focusing hard.
Germane Load: This is the load that contributes to learning and understanding. It is the mental effort that helps you process information to be retained. Well-structured online courses with clear visuals that break down concepts into digestible chunks promote germane load.
Why Do Some Apps Feel Overwhelming?
Now that we understand cognitive load, let us consider why some apps may feel more overwhelming than others:
Information Overload
When an app bombards you with too much information all at once, your brain finds it hard to process. Take a social media app that keeps updating feeds, ads, and notifications. Your brain can’t keep up, and before long, fatigue sets in.
Example: Imagine scrolling through an app filled with endless feeds, notifications, and pop-up ads. Each new post is asking for your attention, so cognitive overload occurs while trying to process all that.
Poor Design and Navigation
Apps with cluttered or confusing navigation might create extraneous load. The number of taps you need to make just to find what you’re looking for will make you frustrated and mentally drained.
A banking application with poor layout, where users feel stressed when trying to transfer money or check their balance, thus increasing their extraneous cognitive load.
Multitasking
Having many apps open at once, or even switching from one task to another, increases cognitive load. The brain keeps shifting focus if you have multiple apps open. So that could get tiring. You might want to follow a recipe on one app and watch the cooking video on another. Such divided attention becomes very difficult to follow, making you drained.
How to Reduce Cognitive Load While Using Apps
Simplify Your Digital Space: Go for apps with a clean design and intuitive navigation. Look for apps that emphasize user experience, which helps you stay focused on the task at hand.
Limit Notifications: Allowing only the necessary notifications will help you focus on one task without constant distractions.
Take Breaks: Give your brain a rest. Step away from your devices for a few minutes to recharge. This will help you return to your apps with a fresh mind.
Organize Your Apps: Keep apps that are similar to each other on your device well-organized. The amount of mental effort required in searching for what you want is reduced by this organization.
Prioritize Tasks: Perform a single task at a time. This helps in the minimization of the cognitive load and will make your experience in using the app more pleasurable.
Understanding cognitive load is the route to making our digital lives easier. Knowing the impact of different apps on our mental energy empowers us to tend to make more prudent decisions regarding app use and selection. The next time you feel exhausted after using some app, just remember that it is not you—maybe just that your brain is overload-ed. You can achieve a more relaxed and productive digital experience with just a few simple tweaks.
So take a deep breath, declutter those apps, and give your brain a break it so rightly deserves!
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