Re: The Septapartist Myth

["Hill, Chris" <EDSCH -at- AIRTOURS -dot- COM>]

As an Occupational Psychologist who is involved in technical writing, I
feel compelled to share my £.02, and argue that psychological theory, if
not Miller's magic number, is important in determining the length of
procedural lists.

The original message states,
        "In the meantime," writes Mark H., "let the truth ring out
across
        this great land, and indeed the great globe itself: no findings
        of psychology or any other science have established, or even
        suggested, that printed lists or procedures should be
limited to 7, 9, or any other number of steps."

but bear in mind the following,

1) Usability Tests reveal that many users will try and digest a complete
list (in my case a procedure viewed via Winhelp, e.g. Printing an
<item>) before attempting to execute the task in the interface.
Therefore, elements of numbered list that exceeds 7 points are likely to
be forgotten, resulting in the user returning the Help again.  Miller
himself states that his work related to 'immedaite recall' and in this
case, it applies whole heartedly.
2) Excessive information results in cognitive overload.  This increases
the probability of error making
3) Asthetics and visual appearance are also important.  Novice users
faced with lenghty procedures are more likely to be put off/try and
aviod having to complete the task, cf. smaller 'chunks' of instruction,
which are easier on the eye and therefore easier to digest.

I'd be interested to hear other reactions.  

As ever, best wishes

Chris Hill
edsch -at- airtours -dot- com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark L. Levinson [SMTP:mark -at- MEMCO -dot- CO -dot- IL]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 1998 2:17 PM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      The Septapartist Myth
> 
> Recently on another e-mail list, Mark Halpern of Siebel Systems
> wrote in to dispel the idea that a numbered list should ideally
> consist of 7 +/-2 items.
> 
> The source of the idea, he says, is a much-misunderstood
> psychology paper by George Miller.  Mark goes on:
> 
>    I did a little search to see if George Miller, author of the
>    classic psychology paper, "The Magical Number Seven..." was
>    still with us.  To my delight, he is -- very much so.  I asked
>    him about the relevance of his findings to rules about
>    how long a printed (or screen-displayed) list should be, and
>    his answer, in short, was 'not at all'; his exact words were:
> 
>                 But the point was that 7 was a
>         limit for the discrimination of unidimensional stimuli
>         (pitches, loudnesses, brightnesses, etc.) and also a limit
>         for immediate recall, neither of which has anything to do
>         with a person's capacity to comprehend printed text ...
> 
> The complete Halpern/Miller dialog is available from me
> ( mailto:mark -at- memco -dot- co -dot- il ).
> 
> And Mark H. says that Miller's paper is available online, at
> 
>         http://www.well.com/user/smailin/miller.html
> 
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Mark L. Levinson - Memco Ltd. - Wallenberg 24 - 69719 Tel Aviv
> - work:  mark -at- memco -dot- co -dot- il / tel. +972-3-6450049 / fax +972-3-6450001
> - home:  nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il / tel. +972-9-9552411 or 9555720
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sometimes I feel like a Slinky on the escalator of life.
>                                                      - Patrick Nolan
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
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