Using knowledge anchors to reduce cognitive overhead

摘要

Cognitive overhead, a well-known Web design problem, was defined by Conklin as the additional effort and concentration necessary to maintain several tasks or trails at one time. Cognitive overhead can be reduced using bidirectional knowledge anchors, points within a frame that have significance to the author-and later to the reader. A knowledge anchor is the point within the frame from which the user can trigger a link. An anchor designates either an area from which a reader may want to branch to investigate other related material or an area to which a reader may want to jump.