There seems to be a lot of confusion in the world about human memory. To be more precise short term versus long term memory. I read one article that said short tem memory was only good for about 10 seconds and then it went into long term memory. Another article said that short term memory was good for about 45 minutes and then it went into long term memory. They all seemed to agree on the fact that for the vast majority of people, what goes into long term memory is only a subset of what goes into short term memory. But what subset?
Do you know why phone numbers are seven digits long? Well, they did studies to determine memory limits and discovered that seven digits seemed to be the sweet spot. If you added a word it lowered it to the word and five digits. (Ex. 555-1212 vs."Pennsylvania 6-5000") To me this isn't short term memory, more of a memory cache.
I'm thinking there are really three types of memory: short term cache, short term memory and long term memory. (Hey, if you get a PhD out of this let me know.) The cache memory we use for really, really short term things, like someone telling us a phone number that we need in order to dial. It stays in memory long enough for us to dial it but then disappears. Short term memory is what you need when you get a phone call on the way home from work and someone tells you to pick up dinner on the way home or perhaps milk and bread. You know, the usual stuff. Long term memory is the stuff that you need to remember for longer periods of time, things like your phone number, your address and where you work. Memory is also affected by how often it is accessed. The more often we repeat something the more likely it is to go into short term memory from the cache and long term memory from short term memory. Have you noticed that if someone gives you a phone number and you repeat it over and over again you are more likely to remember it? Same concept. By repeating the phone number you are reinforcing temporary neural pathways thus allowing the neurons to more easily from permanent pathways. This in turn shifts that neural pathway from being cached to short term to long term. (No idea if that is right, but it sure sounded like I knew what I was talking about.)
So how does this affect you?
When you are designing a web application you need to be able to present people with familiar patterns so that they can more easily memorize complex routes. If your application uses a familiar metaphor it is exponentially easier to use because many of the "memories" needed to access and use the application are already burned into the brain. It is a matter of creating a clone of an existing memory and making a small change. That small change is easier to memorize than an entirely new path. That is why applications that use familiar metaphors are easier to user, easier to follow and easier to learn, because the memories are already built in. People are quite familiar with folders, so the folder metaphor works well for many people.
Here is the scary part, however, the metaphor needs to constantly evolve. When I said that the folder metaphor works for many people, the younger you are the less likely you are to understand the folder metaphor because you are less likely to have encountered folders. The Save icon for many applications is a floppy disk. How many of you have floppy disks at home? How many of you have a computer that can use a floppy disk? The WIMP interface, popular for so many years, is being replaced, but I'm not 100% sure with what. I do know, however, that it needs to be simple, easy to use and it needs to be built on existing memory patterns. Whether it is the memory patterns of old people like me or young people like my daughter, that is yet to be decided.
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