- Photo
- —
- Name
- —
- Field
- Cognitive psychology
- Year
- 1956
- Main topic
- Limits of human short-term memory
- Key idea
- People can hold about 7 (give or take) discrete chunks in working memory at once.
- Why it matters
- Explains why overloaded menus, giant forms, and 20-option settings pages feel like getting full-court pressed.
- Best for
- Pruning UI complexity, onboarding flows, and settings architecture.
- Difficulty
- Medium — old-school academic prose but short.
- My take
- Read this and you’ll start seeing “magic seven” landmines all over your product — and in your slide decks.
- Reading tip
- Skim the intro, then focus on the sections with examples of chunking; you can mostly ignore the mathy bits.
TheLysts
