How you transmit knowledge, share concepts and process information through language, and how structure and legibility affect the visualisation of messages informs the design decisions you make on a daily basis.
To help your audience understand your messaging, you need to know how they will receive and decode the information you send.
Scientific study has provided designers with a number of theoretical tools to refine and improve their messages. Among these, some of the more practical tools are chunking, perception, scanpaths, wayfinding and content structure;
Chunking information (Millar’s magic number seven)
In cognitive psychology, chunking refers to a strategy for making short-term memory more effective.
‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two’ a highly cited 1954 paper from Harvard psychologist George Miller argued that the number of objects (or ‘chunks’) of information the average person can hold in short-term memory is 7 +/-2.
Capacity for short-term memory varies between individuals (and subject expertise), but generally people can process 7 +/-2 individual pieces of information at any one time. This principle can be extended to chunk more complex information. Dividing complex information into subsets that also number 7 +/-2 makes it easier to process, understand and recall.
A practical example of Millar’s Law is the conversion of telephone numbers to smaller, more memorable 4-digit chunks ie. 02079460357 converted to (020) 7946 0357.
Therefore, well considered page or interface design needs to account for the reader’s ability to process multiple information sets in short-term memory. By using layout, colour, typeface, typesize and placement you can ensure that complex information is always arranged into groups numbering 7+/-2 and is thus easier for your audience to process and to understand.
Don’t believe me? Then why do you always make a shopping list for more than five items?
