Technology aside, at the core of Bump’s success was the simple act of touching two phones together. It was straightforward and repeatable — even executed without explanation. “Yes, it’s true that simplicity in products is not a new idea. For decades, some of the most successful products would be best described as simple,” says Lieb. “But simplicity comes in many dimensions: the number of buttons on an interface, number of features, steps in a flow or time it takes to complete a decision, and more. But the dimension that matters most is cognitive simplicity: how easy your product is to understand.”
Cognitive simplicity has its nemesis: cognitive overload. “I like this definition that I found on the internet: Cognitive overhead is the number of logical connections that your brain has to make to contextualize and understand what it sees. Now I’m no brain scientist, but I am pretty good at googling stuff, and I found all sorts of research around human cognition and evolution. There’s a notion that the brain works by grouping objects and ideas it encounters into abstractions, and then considering those abstractions relative to things it already knows,” says Lieb. “Let me give you an example, early humans saw what happens when a lion runs toward something. Bad things, right? Those who were able to abstract this occurrence into an understanding that anytime an object rapidly approaches, it’s probably not a good thing, well, they tended to live longer and pass this brain structure down to their descendants.”
So our brains are hardwired to operate this way — to abstract things and concepts relative to known things and concepts — and the more jumps we make our brains go through, the harder it is to use a product. “Now, yes, for the most part, we don’t have lions attacking us anymore but, consider this: A few decades ago, your users were on a desktop, looking at your website with a big dedicated screen. There was ample time to understand your complex product. No distractions, no lions attacking,” says Lieb. “Mobile has changed all that. Today, I’m walking, dodging a car and opening your app for the first time — all while getting a text message, email alert and Twitter notification. A lot’s happening on a screen that’s magnitudes smaller than a desktop. This new infusion of distraction makes cognitive simplicity more critical than ever.”
https://firstround.com/review/cognitive-overhead-is-your-products-overlord-topple-it-with-these-tips/
an interpretation of the world 