The First Challenge

The first riddle of our lives is very difficult to think about, opening our eyes? Perhaps it was crawling? Or was it saying the first words?

In any case, these riddles have ceased to be important; your new riddles have turned into tasks, whether they are from school or college, from work or daily life, eventually these will also become routines, but why?

The Theory of Cognitive Load

Cognitive Science has been asking about this for some time, more specifically John Sweller, who created the theory of "Cognitive Load," initially designed for the academic field. It observed that students end up exerting much more effort in solving problems when they don't have a didactic direction, causing them mental fatigue and more difficulty in learning.

Cognitive load is directly related to "working memory," a cognitive part of our brain that is used to store temporary and limited information.

"Working memory is limited, both in capacity and duration" (Sweller, 1988)

The Role of the UX Designer

But how does this relate to UX Design? We can use the very theory of cognitive load to answer this question. The UX Designer can be compared to a teacher who uses certain methods for his students to learn more efficiently, or to a conductor, the great director of an orchestra who guides all the music, facilitating the conduction of all the sounds.

The UX Designer is the professional who tries to improve user experience to the maximum, using all resources to make the digital experience pleasant and intuitive, like a good class from a teacher we admire.

Beyond Education: UX in Health and EAD

The relevance of these concepts goes beyond the field of education. In the health sector, for example, there is a high flow of problems to be solved. Professionals already undergo significant mental stress to deal with these issues outside the digital realm, so the work of the UX Designer is to ensure that the professional goes through as little stress as possible when using the healthcare system.

Even in education, with the significant growth of distance learning in the country, we notice more criticism of the systems used by students and teachers. We should view these criticisms as a way to improve the experience of these users, helping them to solve the riddle they are stuck in until now.