The silent killer of high-performance teams is overburden (Muri). It’s the invisible pressure that slowly burns out your people and calcifies your architecture.

In the final part of my blog series on Lean Software Delivery, I look beyond the symptoms to expose the source and set out a practical sociotechnical plan to solve it.

Read the full conclusion here: https://matthew-shaw.github.io/blog/2025/11/25/the-root-cause-of-overburden/

#CognitiveLoad #DevOps #DomainDrivenDesign #Lean #PlatformEngineering #TeamTopologies #TechnicalDebt

Entstigmatisierung mit Games – Podcast E122

Mit Games Vorurteile abbauen, über Mental Health-Themen wie Depression oder Psychosen lernen und Betroffene besser verstehen – gelingt Entstigmatisierung durchs Spielen? Mit Dr. Marco Rüth diskutieren wir die Forschungslage mitsamt seiner eigenen, frisch publizierten Studie und überlegen, ob es ein perfektes Game zur Entstigmatisierung geben könnte.

Bild: Duru, Twisted Ramble Games

Zu Gast

• Dr. Marco Rüth | Linktree

Hosts

• Dr. Benjamin Strobel, Jessica Kathmann | Behind the Screens

TLDR

Transkript für Folge 122 herunterladen

00:00:00 Intro und Begrüßung von Marco
00:08:30 Was ist ein Stigma? Welche Auswirkungen kann Stigmatisierung haben?
00:16:48 Wie gelingt Entstigmatisierung
00:21:35 Marcos Studie: Mit dem Game Duru über Depression lernen
00:43:59 Ergebnisse von Marcos Studie
00:47:32 Welchen Einfluss hat es, ob man ein Spiel selbst spielt oder nur ein Video davon sieht?
01:07:15 Wie müsste ein Spiel gestaltet sein, damit es entstigmatisierend wirken kann?
01:24:37 Fazit und Abmoderation

Psychologie und Konzepte

• Nostalgie
• Stigma
• Entstigmatisierung
• Mental Health
• Depression
• Cognitive Bias
• Ingroup-Bias
• Theorie der sozialen Identität
• Halo-Effekt
• Stereotypen
• Kontakthypothese
• Systemische Therapie
• Psychoedukation
• Stimulus (Experiment)
• Think Aloud-Protokoll
• Cognitive Load
• Alptraum
• Prozedurale Rhetorik
• Pacing (Game Design)
• Verfügbarkeitsheuristik
• Priming

Literatur und weitere Links

• Learning about depression by watching gaming videos: a case study on the potential of digital games for psychoeducation and destigmatization (Rüth et al., 2025)
• Games, was können wir aus euren Erzählungen lernen? Über die Rolle von Erzählungen beim Lernen mit digitalen Spielen (Rüth, 2025)
• Conceptualizing and measuring mental illness stigma: The mental illness stigma framework and critical review of measures. (Fox et al., 2018)
• Entstigmatisierung psychischer Erkrankungen: Scoping Review zu Interventionen und Bestandsaufnahme von Best-Practice-Beispielen (Kerkemeyer et al., 2022)
• Entstigmatisierung psychischer Erkrankungen. Scoping Review zu Interventionen und Bestandsaufnahme von Best-Practice-Beispielen. Ergebnisbericht. (Kerkemeyer & Achtert, 2021)
• Flow and Immersion in Video Games: The Aftermath of a Conceptual Challenge (Michailidis et al., 2018)
• Reducing Mental Health Stigma Through Identification With Video Game Avatars With Mental Illness (Ferchaud et al., 2020)
• Stigmatisierung im Gesundheitssystem (Jiménez et al., 2023)
• Repräsentation in Games – Podcast E035 – Behind the Screens
• Depression in Duru – Podcast E022 – Behind the Screens

Games

• Duru
• Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

In eigener Sache

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#Albtraum #Alptraum #CognitiveBias #CognitiveLoad #Depression #Entstigmatisierung #HaloEffekt #IngroupBias #Kontakthypothese #MentalHealth #Nostalgie #PacingGameDesign_ #ProzeduraleRhetorik #Psychoedukation #Stereotypen #Stigma #StimulusExperiment_ #SystemischeTherapie #TheorieDerSozialenIdentität #ThinkAloudProtokoll #Verfügbarkeitsheuristik

Video call fatigue isn't visual strain - it's audio processing overload. Brain expends 2x cognitive resources filling gaps in compressed audio streams. Simple fix: disable self-view (70% fatigue reduction). Blog explores neurological mechanisms behind digital meeting exhaustion.
#RemoteWork #CognitiveLoad #AudioTech
https://person-aiz.com/blogs/blog/the-hidden-brain-drain-of-virtual-meetings

Result? The developer has to check the project, add the real context, and rewrite the criteria.

The cognitive load moves from the task creator to the team.

Workslop in planning = cognitive offloading, shifting the cognitive burden onto others

#cognitiveload

Den Wunsch der Beschilderer zu erfassen ist nichts für vor dem zweiten Kaffee.

#CognitiveLoad

#FFM #Schilderwald
(Gutleutstraße / Main-Neckar-Brücke)

Ever wondered what cognitive load looks like in real teams? Visualizing it helps spot overload early and adjust tasks for better flow. How do you notice stress building in your team? #CognitiveLoad #Teamwork #Wellbeing

Cognitive Load is what matters

https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load

#HackerNews #CognitiveLoad #CognitiveScience #LearningTech #Education #Psychology

🎤 Dmitrii Ivanov spoke at Appdevcon!

The talk 'Beyond the Code: Identifying and Reducing Complexity in Software Design' is now live!💪 🚀

🎥 Watch it here: https://appdevcon.nl/session/beyond-the-code-identifying-and-reducing-complexity-in-software-design/

#adc25 #bestpractice #architecture #cognitiveload #complexity #appdevcon

What happens to your brain when you watch videos online at faster speeds than normal
#FastPlayback #DigitalLearning #CognitiveLoad #MemoryRecall #BrainHealth #OnlineLearning #VideoSpeed #EdTech #AttentionSpan #LearningScience #Neuroscience #MentalFatigue
https://the-14.com/what-happens-to-your-brain-when-you-watch-videos-online-at-faster-speeds-than-normal/

Cognitive load isn’t theory. It’s what drags down real teams.

If your engineers are juggling tools, switching contexts, and owning tech they don’t understand, it’s too much.

Focused teams deliver. Distracted ones burn out.

#TeamTopologies #CognitiveLoad #DevOps

"The real innovation, the sustainable progress, comes from maintaining deep understanding while embracing AI's capabilities."

#softwareengineering #cognitiveload #vibecoding

https://nmn.gl/blog/dangers-vibe-coding

The #platform is first and foremost a curated experience for its users, usually engineers in internal teams. We must design the platform with the user in mind, with a strong focus on the user experience and developer experience. A curated experience means that we provide value by focusing on reducing the #cognitiveload for users by making the platform easy to use.

Often this means simplifying the use of external software and services, through useful internal abstractions and workflows.

A few times over the last several decades I’ve unsubscribed from every social media account, RSS feed, newsletter, YouTube channel, etc. and started with a clean slate. My goal was, as I wrote about in 2012 on this blog, to break out of my echo chamber and hopefully expand my thinking.

Slowly resubscribing to my interests is a lot of work. But it has been worth it and I know I have been […]

https://cdevroe.com/2025/03/19/spring-is-for-unsubscribing/

Have you ever wondered how to measure #CognitiveLoad? There is no standardized scientific method for measuring it. However, for teams involved in software delivery and operations, we can ask about their understanding of the software, business domain, and user needs. By identifying factors that contribute to increased cognitive load, such as #testability, #operability, prioritization difficulties, and domain complexity, we can work towards alleviating these challenges.

Curious to hear how others on Mastodon experience (or push back against) the idea of ego depletion in their creative practices. #cheeio #EgoDepletion #CreativePractice #CognitiveLoad #MastodonCreatives

Onderzoekers van een aantal Duitse universiteiten hebben onderzoek gedaan waarbij zij hebben gekeken naar cognitieve belasting en leerresultaten bij het het gebruik van grote taalmodellen (LLM's), in vergelijking met traditionele zoekmachines, voor het verzamelen van informatie tijdens het leren. Wat valt op?
https://www.te-learning.nl/blog/grote-taalmodellen-reduceren-cognitieve-belasting-al-kan-dit-ook-ten-koste-gaan-van-het-leren/
#generatieveai #artificialintelligence #onderzoek #cognitiveload #onderwijs #verdiependleren #onderzoekendleren #edutoot

This is a nice read about developers cognitive load. https://minds.md/zakirullin/cognitive#full #softwaredevelopment #cognitiveload

My latest blog post discusses one of my favorite pieces of advice on API design.

> When in doubt, leave it out.

It comes from Joshua Bloch, one of the architects of Java.

https://henko.net/blog/leave-it-out/

#programming #api #softwardesign #minimalism #cognitiveload

"There is no definitive metric for ascertaining the #cognitiveload of a #valuestream. Sometimes you can tell by looking at an event storm and the capabilities that a subdomain will be too much work for a single team. In other cases, the situation might not be so clear, so we suggest evaluating your candidate subdomains using this cognitive load assessment chart".

Hear more in the free video from the "Independent #ValueStreams with #DomainDrivenDesign" course https://lnkd.in/eXgwG64k

This is why it’s crucial to recognize these patterns and structure your decision-making process to reduce mental strain and boost overall well-being.
https://retroworldnews.com/understanding-decision-fatigue-and-effective-strategies-to-manage-it/

#DecisionFatigue #MentalHealth #Productivity #WorkLifeBalance #StressManagement #CognitiveLoad #Mindfulness #TimeManagement #SelfCare #Leadership #DecisionMaking #Focus #WorkplaceWellness #EmotionalIntelligence #BurnoutPrevention #PersonalDevelopment #StrategicThinking #Resilience #HealthyHabits #WorkplaceProductivity #life