To be or not to be seven, plus or minus two
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Rich collaboration

My work and experience in the online space is exciting and fulfilling because of my close collaboration with two very talented and creative professionals, Renée Todres and Heather Schoenheimer.

Renée is the Managing Director of Tipping Point, a digital services company with extensive experience in e-marketing, website design and innovative web-based business solutions.

Heather is the CEO of HS Consulting, and a specialist consultant in HR, Learning Development, Organisation Capability and Leadership Curricula.

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The research that produced the 7+/-2 principle was conducted in 1956 and, since that time, has been widely applied to the organisation of online information, the design of user interfaces and the development of web navigation.

Why? The answer may simply be that the 7+/-2 principle is being applied without any consideration of the relevance of the research to its real-time applications.

A quick historical recap

Almost 50 years ago, George A. Miller, a Princeton University psychologist, conducted specialised research that was designed to test the limits of short-term or, as it is now known, working memory.

Miller's results were published in 1956 as The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information and aroused strong interest. In fact, many claim Miller as the father of cognitive psychology because of that paper and that research.

Miller's research was the primary basis for the chunking principle of Robert E. Horn's Information Mapping Methodology and is constantly quoted to justify recommendations for element groupings such as

• the number of chunks of information on a page
• the number of items in a list
• the number of items in an online menu
• the number of controls in forms and dialog boxes

So... a primary principle or a mythology?

George Miller himself has regularly protested at the blanket application of his research results to information design.

Read Seven, plus or minus two. What's the relevance for web design? (pdf 82 KB)

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