The Cognitive Abilities of Human Beings
summary
Claims that short-term memory holds only a few seconds and about 7±2 short-term items lead to concrete rules: design for ~5 meaningful chunks, not nine. Uses Gestalt tests—proximity, similarity, continuity, closure—to show grouping, whitespace and partial occlusion cue scrolling; a French insurance page and a bank iPad app are fixed by re-grouping and a color tweak found in usability testing so users then locate account info. Shows affordance failures (doors, taps, chairs, buttons) and when skeuomorphism helps or an authentically digital cue suffices.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Start
- 1:30Today's topics
- 2:44Miller's Law
- 7:23Gestalt Principles
- 8:55Proximity
- 12:06Similarity
- 14:04Continuity
- 17:31Closure
- 26:49Affordance - when missing
- 31:30When you have a hammer...
- 36:04In software?
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