Have you ever watched a learning video and felt completely overwhelmed, even though the topic itself wasn't that complicated? That feeling of mental exhaustion is cognitive overload, and it's often the result of poor instructional design.

Host Matt Pierce introduces Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), a framework that explains how our brains process information and, more importantly, how we can design learning experiences that work with our cognitive limitations rather than against them.

Matt breaks down the three types of cognitive load: intrinsic (the inherent difficulty of the material), extraneous (unnecessary mental effort caused by poor design), and germane (the beneficial mental effort that leads to real learning).

Throughout the episode, Matt shares practical, actionable strategies that video creators can implement immediately to create videos that teach rather than overwhelm.

Learning points from the episode include:

• 00:00 - 01:00 Introduction to cognitive overload in learning videos
• 01:00 - 02:30 What cognitive load theory is
• 02:30 - 03:45 A closer look at the three types of cognitive load in practice
• 03:45 - 05:17 Managing content difficulty
• 05:17 - 07:00 Timing actions for visual clarity
• 07:00 - 09:46 Removing distractions and simplifying visuals
• 09:46 - 11:00 Simplifying learning for better retention
• 11:00 - 11:50 Promoting deeper understanding in videos
• 11:50 - 13:10 Practical application and resources for creating effective training videos
• 13:10 - 13:30 Outro

Important links and mentions:

• Learn more about Dr Richard Mayer’s principles for multimedia learning: https://www.digitallearninginstitute.com/blog/mayers-principles-multimedia-learning
• Find more resources from Jonathan Halls: https://jonathanhalls.com/

What if your best looking training videos are quietly making

learning harder and not because your content is

wrong, but because the brain is overloaded before the lesson can land?

Let's talk about how to fix that. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon.

Wherever you are and wherever you're watching from, welcome to the visual

lounge. Let's just dive in. Imagine a

postcard sized desk. Tiny, right? That's your

learner's working memory. Put a few items on it and

it's great. Stack on a few more and well,

things are going to start sliding off in learning. That desk

has two incoming channels. The auditory channel, the words

which I say, and the visual channel which the viewer sees.

If we pour in too much busy screens, dense

narration, duplicate text, things are just going to start falling off the

desk. That's cognitive overload.

Our job is to design so only the right items are on

the desk at the right time. Today we'll use some

proven multimedia principles to do three Eliminate the noise we add

by accident. We're going to respect the brain's limit with smart

pacing and find ways to guide the eye so attention

lands where meaning lives. Now, extraneous

load is mental effort. That doesn't help learning. It's clutter

on the desk. If an element doesn't point to meaning,

it's probably noise. So we want to start thinking about cutting

decorative backgrounds, pop ups, extra toolbars,

and sometimes our clever flourishes that really

don't serve the current setup. A common

overload pattern is actually reading and watching at the same

time. So if you're using full sentence text on screen

while narrating or over live interface, that's

going to force the visual channel to read and track the demo simultaneously

while the narration competes for attention. So here's what you can do

instead. First, let your voice carry the why.

Let the screen when you show it carry the what? And

keep on screen. Text short and purposeful. You can think about

labels, maybe keywords or steps, numbers.

But put full sentence and captions on or transcripts, not full,

floating over the demo and while scripting. Or you're going

through your review process, here's three quick questions you can

ask. Is this element necessary to understand this

step? Is any text duplicating what I'm

saying? Can a viewer tell instantly what matters

on the screen? And if the answer to the last step is

no, we'll solve it shortly by guiding the eye. Remember,

everything has to fight for a place in your video. That's audio

as well as visual as well as text.

Now, intrinsic load is the complexity of the content

itself. I can't make a 15 step

workflow inherently simple, but I can make it

learnable. How can we do this? Well, we could break the lesson into

small meaningful clusters. Maybe two to five actions per

cluster. And you can finish a cluster by giving it a brief

breath. Then you can move on. If the platform

supports it, you can let the learner's click continue, which I

know gets a bad rap, but sometimes it might actually be really good. And if

not, you can insert a short verbal reset. Phase one, record

do the steps. Phase two, edit next small

cluster. Phase three, export those two

to four second resets. Let working memory file

what it just learned before before the next items hit the desk.

There's probably lots of ways to do this. Another one is you could just invite

the learner to pause the video and let them take the breath that they need.

Now, when terms or parts are new, teach the

pieces before the process. 30 to 60 seconds of

meet the parts plays off. For example, you'll use a

timeline to cut the canvas to see changes and export to

produce an MP4. That's all we need for today.

Now, during the workflow, learners aren't decoding labels

and following logic at the same time. Segmentation

and pre training don't dumb down anything. They actually

sequence complexity. So the tiny desk never

overloads. Now, I realize I've covered a lot of vocabulary

and I'm about to introduce a new term which you might be saying, oh my

gosh, this is a lot of learning science, and it is, but it's good to

know. Germane processing is the good effort, the mental work that

builds a durable mental model or schema. Both are

good terms and both well worth knowing. So we maximize

our mental model or the good effort by

directing attention and aligning our timing. You want to tell

learners exactly where to look and why it matters, even

in a talk to camera format. We can give you an example.

For instance, if I were to say in the top right, the save button, this

locks in your changes. That's going to make immediate sense to you.

Now if I were to cut to screen occasionally, you could do something

like a tight crop and a consistent highlight. Give it an

arrow, an outline or, or halo or something. Use

sparingly to add to that understanding the

clarity that you're going to provide. One thing you can do as you show a

step is say the action. As the action happens, you

might hover a beat, then say the action and then perform it

as it said. You know, words and visuals actually should

Arrive together so your viewer doesn't have to hold one thing

in working memory while waiting for the other. There is a

slight option there that you can say, start moving the cursor, give

it a little bit of lead so the eye starts following and then say the

thing that you want to say. That's also an appropriate way. You just don't want

to have such a big gap if the mouse goes up there to waiting. And

you know you want to, you want to save the thing as it moves with

it. So let's go through another

example and just a pattern that you can follow along

with. So it's pretty easy. It's going to get very repetitive quickly, but I think

it'll help illustrate the idea. So let's say you set the target

in two minutes, you'll know how to record trim and export. Perfect,

right? Then next you can Pre train in 30

to 60 seconds depending on what you're trying to show. Something like your

timeline is going to equal cuts and your canvas is going to

equal views and your Export equals your

MP4. So you're setting them up, providing them with

clarity of what each of the pieces are and then you can start

to segment by your sub goals. So for instance, you might have several phases

like phase one, record a small cluster of steps and add a

one line recap. Then you'll move on to phase two, edit,

which is our small cluster. And again another recap.

And then you can move into phase three. And again you never have to mention

which phase you're on to the learner. You just follow the pattern where you're

talking about exporting, where it's a small cluster and a recap. And

again you're going to want to signal and sync inside each cluster by naming the

target clearly and saying the action as it happens.

Now, at the very end of that video, you could close with the retrieval cue.

This is a one sentence summary that restates the goal and

the crucial step a lot, I know,

but here's another, maybe more concrete scenario.

So let's say that we've got a video that we're going to make. Again, about

making an export of a video. Today's goal is simple. Record,

trim, export before we start. The parts you'll use are the

timeline for cuts, the canvas to see changes and and the

export to produce your MP4. Now let's get started.

First with recording, Start a capture stop when you're

done and your clip appears in the project. For

our next step, we're going to look at editing what you're going to do is

find the pause, make two cuts, remove the gap and close

it up. Now the last thing we need to do is export,

choose an MP4 and confirm. The key idea is that

you're explaining and showing things together. You don't need

paragraphs on screen. You just want to focus on one thing at a time and

help them move through the process seamlessly. If you

have something going on, like a continuous monologue, insert a micro

reset. Something like that completes phase one. Here's what you

should have now then you can continue on. Maybe you're

reading big paragraphs on screen while narrating. Gosh, that's

a lot. Replace them with labels or keywords. Put full

sentences again in captions or in the transcript.

Vague references like it's up there somewhere. You would actually want to

do something like name and locate top right, the save button.

And if you cut to a screen, crop tight and use one

subtle highlight. I'd also encourage you to increase the size of your

mouse cursor so it's easy to see and it's always findable on your

screen. Okay, let's start recapping, because that was

a lot, right? So cut the clutter. If it doesn't support

meaning, it steals attention. You want to chunk the

challenge, teach parts first and group steps into

small paced segments. And then you want to guide the gaze,

be explicit about where to look and say the action as it

happens. Now, your job isn't to merely make

videos beautiful, it's to make them learnable. Control

the visuals, control the timing, control the clarity and

cognitive overload. It's going to happen at some point. You've probably experienced

it as you've watched videos. Just remember that on the other side of

your video is a human being who is trying to learn and trying to

understand. Now, you might know them or you might not know

them, but your goal is to help them regardless, to

get through the complexity of whatever it is you're teaching.

Here's a quick tip that we picked up a long Time ago

@TechSmith is if you say something like, oh, this is an

easy process, just click, blah, blah, blah. Guess what?

It might be easy for you, but maybe not for them.

And if there's a multitude of steps, you got a lot more steps, maybe more

steps than even three or four. All of a sudden you've added this complexity

that you really again, want to pull back on and be thinking about, how

can I help them take this idea,

this process that they're trying to learn. Maybe it's even Thought

leadership and how do I help them move it into the learning

kind of process? Again, we want to go back here as we wrap up

and think about what is it that we're trying to do? Well, we're

trying to make ideas, processes, all

these things move from video

into that working memory, into the long term

memory so we can pull it out of the catalog, the library and

into, you know, we have a good retrieval process. Video

inherently is tough to do. It's tough to move from working memory

into long term memory. So you need to be thinking about what are the things

that are going to help to reinforce, to bring back up and so

allow that person to give them time to put into long term memory, but also

encourages them to use it enough that it sticks so well. This

has been a lot, it's a little bit different of an idea. I wanted to

do something as I've been thinking a lot about video creation from a learning

perspective and here's what I'll

end on. I think if you go through this, you're probably going to say, well,

whoo, that was a lot. There is a lot of great research

out there about cognitive load, about working memory, about

the learning process, learning science. If you're looking for stuff related

to visuals and multimedia, Richard Mayer is a great

resource to search for. Dr. Richard Mayer. Jonathan Halls

has some great stuff out there. If you are in the ATD ecosystem,

you might know Jonathan Halls. He's written this book creating training videos.

Uh, this one's about using smartphones, but it's got a lot of great backup on

kind of learning sciences and, and getting started. Jonathan's been a guest on the

show. Um, there's lots of great information out there and I hope

this is just a taste to get you going so that you want to make

better videos. You want to make better, more effective learning videos.

Now the other thing I have to mention is that

AI is going to play into this, right? You can take your

ideas and pit them against AI and ask it to pull

on the current research, ask it to look at things,

to fact check to make sure are there better ways to move

this through. I've just presented a series of ways, just

some simple things. There's many more things that you can do.

Lean to your AI, just don't remember, don't let it do everything.

Be the human in the process because your ideas are fantastic

and your learners will benefit from what you bring to the

table in that human way. Especially if you're helping them

to not get overloaded cognitively where that they

can actually remember the things that they need to do and apply the learning that

you're providing for them. Well, that's it. I hope that

some of this hits home for, for some of you. I'd love to hear from

you in the comments. You can always, of course, email us@the

visualloungexmith.com we'd love to hear from you and we hope that you take a

little time to level up every single day. Thanks,

everybody.