information – Jason Hensel

We’ve been lead to believe for decades that the number of items a mind can cope with before it gets confused is seven. This number comes from a 1956 paper by psychologist George Miller titled “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.” In fact, the Psychological Review named it the most influential paper of all time.

However, Gordon Parker, a University of New South Wales professor of psychiatry, says that Miller is incorrect. Parker says the mind works with four “chunks” of information, rather than seven.

“So to remember a seven numeral phone number, say 6458937, we need to break it into four chunks: 64. 58. 93. 7,” Parker said. “Basically four is the limit to our perception. That’s a big difference for a paper that is one of the most highly referenced psychology articles ever–nearly a 100 percent discrepancy.”

Parker suggests that the original paper’s success stems from “more in its multilayered title and Miller’s evocative use of the word ‘magic’,” than in the science.

Still, the mind’s storage capacity limits are unclear, Parker says.

“There may be no limit in storage capacity per se but only a limit to the duration in which items can remain active in short-term memory,” he said. “Regardless, the consensus now is that humans can best store only four chunks in short-term memory tasks.”

This will come in handy when you’re trying to memorize something. Or maybe it doesn’t matter that much anymore, since we can rely on computers and smart phones to access information quickly.

(Story materials via the University of New South Wales. Image via Open Clip Art Library / artefact.)

Send to Kindle

I’m all boxed out. It’s as every website I visit nowadays consists of boxes of text and images. Check out GOOD‘s site. Check out CNN. Hell, even Facebook has gotten in some box action, changing profiles to feature more of them.

Even for the company I work, its redesigned website features boxes. In a column on our site, Chris Brogan says that we are emulating Pinterest. That’s not true. We are trying to fit into the flow of how people consume information today.

“…the Web isn’t just an electronic academic journal any more,” Brogan wrote. “It’s visual. It’s bite-sized. It’s a place where we can choose an entry point and dig in.”

I’m in favor of ease. I’m in favor of nice website design. I’m also interested in what it says about society when website designers move toward boxes in their designs.

People overwhelmed with information and wanting categorization reminds me of a study by Laura L. Carstensen, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She published a paper in 2006 titled “The Influence of a Sense of Time on Human Development” in which she explained that “the subjective sense of a future time plays an essential role in human motivation.”

According to her study, when time is constrained, a person’s motivation priorities focus on emotional states rather than knowledge gathering. Consider this study in design terms–if you know a person has a limited amount of time for browsing, it makes sense to group things together so they can focus only on what interests them. Carstensen showed that people surround themselves with only a small group of friends when time is limited. The same goes with boxes on websites–people want to categorize their interests and friends. (Google+ prefers to use circles instead of boxes, by the way.)

There’s also a new study from the Journal of Consumer Research that says when people feel like they have no control over circumstances they seek boundaries.

“People often turn to aesthetic boundaries in their environment to give them a sense that their world is ordered and structured as opposed to random and chaotic,” the study’s author Keisha Cutright wrote. “When individuals no longer feel in control of their lives, they seem to seek the sense of order and structure that boundaries provide—the sense that ‘there’s a place for everything and everything is in its place.’”

It’s not surprising then that a lot of websites are using boxes. When all those boxes on all those websites start to pile up, though, it too can become as overwhelming as the information they contain. It’s like when you move into a new place and all your boxes surround you. The choice is to feel suffocated by them or get to work clearing them out so that you can live a free life, one that is fluid and less constrained.

That’s the design trend I’m waiting for someone to unbox.

(Photo via Flickr: Brian Brooks / Creative Commons)

Send to Kindle

Jason Hensel

Lucky Number…Four?

Every Day is Boxing Day on the Web