This week we examined another Law of UX – Miller’s Law.
Miller’s Law can be summarised as this: The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
What does this mean for designers?
Well, you have to organize content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and memorize easily. Basically, you want to limit the total amount of information that users have to consider at once. It’s also important not to organise content into too many sections or chunks, as this can also be counter-productive. The rule of thumb is that the ideal section size is around 5 chunks.
When users use an interface for the first time, it’s especially important to find a good balance, as they may have an easier time retaining and recalling the information if it’s not too overwhelming.
The more features you add to your design, the higher the information density is, and the harder it is to streamline this content into easy to remember categories or sections. In smart phones, notification bars are limited to less than 7 icons, so the user can easily see and manage which messages they need to see and which they can postpone to later.However, if the user wants to check all their notifications, they can slide the notification bar up or down – revealing an easy to access grid of all their messages and app notifications.
In a sign up form for a site, there are often several pages instead of one page filled with all the sections that the user is required to complete. The user is also more likely to complete this onboarding process if the amount of steps to be completed is not intimidating in length.
With this in mind, I can now start to think about the various sections and features of my future healthcare app design for this module.
How should I display and streamline content in my app so that it’s easily accessible and memorable?
