Re: The Myth of Seven, Plus or Minus Two

[Steven Jong <SteveFJong -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Darren Barefoot posted this URL to "a pretty interesting read about the
changing face of Web interface design:"

http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=4058/nam1012431804/

I'm a supporter of the Miller principle across many areas of 
information design, and I wanted to point out that to me, the cited 
article was not persuasive. It argued by assertion that Miller's work 
doesn't apply today, without saying why. (Why not? Why, it just *can't* 
be!) I was particularly unimpressed with the notion that we have in 
essence evolved in the last 50 years to be able to absorb more 
information at a glance.

I believe studies were done in the eighties to find the optimal balance 
between depth (how many forms deep?) and breadth (how many items per 
form?) in menu structures; I believe Miller's work was validated then. 
It would be interesting to see some contemporary studies with Web pages 
and links on pages. That would be more persuasive than someone saying 
"is not!" (and me saying "is so!" 8^)


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