7 plus or minus 2

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 George Miller's (?) research on short-term memory (sorry,
 don't have the article handy) found that most people have
 no trouble holding 7 discrete items in their heads, hence
 the 7 digits in our telephone numbers. (The +/-2 part
 refers to the range of variation.) I've seen frequent
 attacks on people who extrapolate this research to
 instructions, user manuals, etc., but I have to say the
 attacks are unjust... if only because there's no research
 to support them, any more than there's research to support
 extending Miller's findings beyond phone numbers to
 software docs.

 For example, if pressing 7 numbers in sequence (to phone
 someone) is a practical maximum for a mixed audience, then
 surely following 7 steps in sequence is equally complex. I
 hate instructions where I must look back and forth between
 a manual and the screen several times just to get a task
 done; I much prefer the ones where I can hold the 7 or
 fewer steps in my short-term memory and step through the
 task without looking back at the book. YMMV, and I can't
 cite any research to support me.

 The important point is that Miller discovered a good
 principle, even if it isn't _the_ single unifying principle
 behind all communication, and it should be evaluated by the
 same standards as any other tool: does it work here, and if
 so, how? More importantly, how can we do some audience
 analysis to see if our hypothesis is correct for our
 specific context?

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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