101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition

#31

Split Menu Items Down Into Subsections, so Users Don’t Have to Remember Large Lists

Humans are better at some things than others. We’re really good, for example, at drawing a pretty picture of a flower, but we’re not so good at instantly recalling the precise genus of that flower and its scientific name. Computers are better at that kind of thing.

The rule of thumb for the number of items that a person can reasonably remember and juggle in a list is “seven, plus or minus two.” (Stipulated in George A. Miller’s The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, first published in 1956 in Psychological Review.) This research has been around since the 1950s and has sadly been misunderstood and misinterpreted over the years.

The rule doesn’t mean ...