INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered how lifestyle choices for everyone differ with age and profession, yet patterns can be found about how they feel throughout on a daily basis which surfeits them to understand which sphere of activity is causing the increase of mental workload. In psychology, cognitive load refers to the used amount of working memory resources. As one most likely experiences, sometimes tasks involve great effort. That’s because working memory is quite vulnerable to overload. This occurs as we study increasingly complex subjects and perform increasingly complex tasks. As learning experience designers, we have to watch for cognitive load, which refers to the total amount of mental activity imposed on working memory in any one instant. Cognitive capacity is the total amount of information the brain is capable of retaining at any particular moment. What causes too much demand on working memory? One reason comes from an abundance of novel information. More information than a person can process. But the high cognitive load is also strongly influenced by the number of elements in working memory that interact with each other. Often, complex tasks are based on interacting elements that must be processed simultaneously. For example, learning to drive involves understanding how several elements simultaneously interact, such as considering the pressure required to brake, the amount to turn the steering wheel, staying alert to traffic conditions, and making adjustments for weather conditions. 

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PURPOSE & OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this process is to understand how cognitive load is generated during the day to day life and how different it is from perceived overload. To understand how different stakeholders deal with everyday cognitive overload and when it becomes detrimental to them.

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Inclusive design is designing to be inclusive of as many users as possible, considering all aspects of diversity in users. The main objective is to distribute the load on their working memory so that they can perform more effectively without the stress and anxiety holding on to their overloaded minds.

SCOPE

We understand that with the wide age spectrum that we interviewed and the insights to which were led by the conversations that we had with these 9 individuals, it is very clear that the load felt by every individual varies depending on age, current marital status and the jobs they do. And on the basis of these factors, their ability to take the load varies and they feel burdened in varied sections of life and no two individuals or age groups feel the same issues. Thus providing us with the visible gap that needs to be catered to provide with a solution that helps in motivating individuals to not just work efficiently and manage their stress but also communicate in real life.

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METHODOLOGY

Understanding the impact of Cognitive overload. It is agreed that there is a challenge involved in utilizing metrics that are too abstract and on too general a level in evaluating the impact of cognitive overload. Therefore a diverse set of metrics is needed: those that are based on the earlier research understanding of users’ expectations and in-depth user interviews were taken to understand the focal constructs of information overload and self-efficacy.

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The study will follow the abductive approach, positivist paradigm, qualitative techniques as adopted by a few other studies in a similar domain. Qualitative parts (a mix of open-ended and behavior-based questions) are needed; after all, the research field still requires rather an explorative approach, to reveal various user acceptance and experience-related issues and an unstructured approach to inquiry allows flexibility in all aspects of the research process. It is more important to explore the nature of a problem, issue or phenomenon without quantifying it. Data will be collected at one point in time i.e time horizon will be cross-sectional. Card Sorting will be used to find interview insights and develop user stories and content & functional requirements.

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IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS

As we started defining our stakeholders, we realized that the best option would be to not define it yet. The target audience set started from 18 years to 75-year-olds. We then interviewed around 9 people within 7 days to understand how cognitive overload is created on a daily basis without any bias in professions. A table is given below specifying the characteristics of people interviewed with a column for each attribute.

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AFFINITY MAPPING -PHASE 1