Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Chunking

A technique of combining many units of information into a limited number of units or chunks, so that the information is easier to process and remember.

The term chunk refers to a unit of information in short-term memory—a string of letters, a word, or a series of numbers. The technique of chunking seeks to accommodate short-term memory limits by formatting information into a small number of units. The maximum number of chunks that can be efficiently processed by short-term memory is four, plus or minus one. For example, most people can remember a list of five words for 30 seconds, but few can remember a list of ten words for 30 seconds. By breaking the list of ten words into multiple, smaller chunks (e.g., two groups of three words, ...