Cognitive effort
"In the information age, as computers invade our lives and more and more products contain a chip of silicon, we find that what lies between us humans and our devices is cognitive friction, which is something new and something that we are ill-prepared to deal with. Our engineering skills are highly refined, but when we apply them to a cognitive friction problem, they fail to solve it."
Alan Cooper, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, p. 92.
"Don't make me think!"
Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 11
"It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice."
Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 41
"Promotional language imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts."
Jakob Nielsen, "Reading on the web", Alertbox
"If readers must puzzle over unfamiliar or ambiguous words, you are making them work harder than they need to."
Crawford Kilian, Writing for the Web, p. 13
"The Web is like the Trojan Horse of information overload. It promised information nirvana and delivered overload hell."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 5.