22 · Remembering
Cognitive Load
The mental effort it takes to understand something and use it.
Evidence: Holds, with limitsWhat we do with it
- 01
Cut anything that makes people think without helping them finish.
- 02
Pop-ups, extra steps and clutter all use up effort the real task needed.
- 03
Some effort belongs to the job itself. Your work is removing the rest.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
A signup form that asks for company size, role and how you heard about us before you can try anything.
Do
Email and a password. Everything else can wait until the product has earned it.
The evidence
What the research says.
Well supported in learning research, and the core advice (cut what adds effort without helping) holds up. The weak spot is measurement: most studies ask people to rate their own mental effort, and Ton de Jong's 2010 review argued that those ratings can't separate the kinds of load the theory describes. Nina Hollender and colleagues reviewed 65 HCI papers that use the theory in 2010 and argued that the effort a piece of software adds on its own should be measured apart from the effort of the content it carries.
Sources
- Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2).
- de Jong, T. (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional Science, 38(2).
- Hollender, N., Hofmann, C., Deneke, M., & Schmitz, B. (2010). Integrating cognitive load theory and concepts of human-computer interaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current