Information Architecture grew out of many disciplines, one of which was Ergonomics, where 'Performance' is imperative to product design. Until the internet era, Ergonomists largely worked in industries where safety was critical, such as Air Traffic Control and Nuclear Power.
Now, with the increasing ease of measurement of customer behaviour on web sites, similar performance-based engineering techniques can be applied to the design of digital user experiences. Designing conversion funnels for performance being an important example.
In measuring performance, you need to attend to two things. First the quality of the work done. Second, the costs to the user of doing that work. Design for performance needs to account for both these things. It boils down to getting users through the conversion funnel quickly, and with minimum frustration and delay, so they are satisfied they have achieved what they want, at an acceptable cost.
To read more about how Cognitive Engineering can inform the design of conversion funnels, take a look the site Unthinkable Thought
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