Tantek Çelik, a true Web hero, offers “Three Hypotheses of Human Interface Design“. He puts some nice language around the concepts that “more clicks is more cognitive load”, that “more latency is more cognitive load”, and that therefore cognitive load is the enemy of usability. (quotes are paraphrases)
It follows that better sites load faster and require fewer clicks.
I know it may sound like that’s common sense, and to a certain degree it is, but I’m saddened by how infrequently that “common sense” drives contemporary design and engineering decisions.
Don’t stop with my summary. It’s worth it to read his examples and context, which you can do here.
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