Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Depth of Processing

A phenomenon of memory in which information that is analyzed deeply is better recalled than information that is analyzed superficially.1

Thinking hard about information improves the likelihood that the information will be recalled at a later time. For example, consider two tasks that involve interacting with and recalling the same information. In the first task, a group of people is asked to locate a keyword in a list and circle it. In the second task, another group of people is asked to locate a keyword in a list, circle it, and then define it. After a brief time, both groups are asked to recall the keywords from the tasks. The group that performed the second task will have better recall of the keywords because they had to ...