Cognition and design-understanding the UI design guidelines note (7) our attention is limited and our memory is not perfect

Short-term memory:

Short-term memory is not stored-it is not the place where memories and feelings are processed. More accurately, it is not a temporary storage place for information obtained by the system or retrieved from long-term memory. Short-term memory is a combination of feelings and attention.

Each of our senses has a very short-term "Memory", which is caused by the residual neural activity after sensory stimulation, just like the short remaining sound after the bell is struck. Before they completely disappear, these residual feelings can serve as inputs to the brain's attention mechanism, and are integrated with signals received by other senses, making us aware of them. These sensory-specific residual feelings constitute a small part of long-term memory.

 

Long-term memory

The formation of long-term memory is composed of long-term or even permanent changes in neurons involved in a neural activity pattern, which makes the pattern easily reactivated in the future. Some of these changes release certain chemicals to the areas around neurons, changing their sensitivity to stimulation for a long time until these chemicals are diluted or neutralization. However, the growth of neurons and the establishment of new connections between neurons lead to more permanent changes.

The more often a neural memory pattern is re-activated, the more intense it becomes-that is, the easier it is to re-activate it. This means that the corresponding feeling is more likely to be recognized and recalled. The neural forgetting model can also be strengthened or weakened by irritating or inhibitory signals from other parts of the brain.

 

Features of short-term memory

Short-term memory is the focus of attention, that is, anything we focus on in our consciousness at any time.

What you realize at this moment is the first few words and concepts you have read, but most of you have not noticed the color of the wall in front of you. But now I have moved your attention. You should have noticed the color of the wall, but you may have forgotten some of the concepts you mentioned on the previous page.

The most important feature of short-term memory is its low capacity and high instability.

Influence of short-term memory on User Interface Design

The capacity and instability of short-term memory have many influences on the design of interactive computer systems. The most basic revelation is that the user interface should help users remember the core information from the moment to the next moment. Do not ask users to remember the system status or what they have done, because they focus on the main objectives and the progress towards the Goals.

Mode

The limited capacity and instability of short-term memory are the reason why the user interface design guidelines often say that either the mode is avoided or sufficient mode feedback is provided. In a user interface in the usage mode, some user operations have different effects based on the mode in which the system is located. For example:

In the drawingProgramClick and drag usually select one or more graphic objects on the screen, but when the software is in the "Draw box" mode, click and Drag to add a box on the screen and pull it to the desired size.

Mode allows a device to have more functions than controls. The same control provides different functions in different modes. Mode allows the interactive system to assign different meanings to the same operation, thus reducing the number of operations that users must learn.

However, one common mistake that people often make is that they forget the current model of the system and lead to misoperations. Therefore, when designing the interface, avoid the mode or provide strong feedback to inform the current mode.

Search results

When people use the search function on their computers to search for information, the evaluation results often require that they know what the corresponding search term is. However, we have learned that short-term memory is very limited. When the results appear, people's attention naturally shifted from the words they entered to the results. Therefore, when looking at the search results, people often forget what the search term is.

Some online search designers do not understand this. Some search websites display the search term used to generate the search results when displaying the search results.

Command

If you ask a friend about his path to his house, she will give you a long list of steps, and you will not remember them. You may take notes. When using these commands later, you will place them where you can see them until the goal is complete.

Similarly, an interactive system that is used to display instructions in multiple steps should allow users to view instructions at any time during the process of completing all operation steps. Most systems will consider this.

Disadvantages of long-term memory

There are many differences between long-term memory and short-term memory. Unlike short-term memory, long-term memory is indeed the storage of memory.

However, specific memories are not stored in any nerve cell or part of the brain. As mentioned above, memory, like feeling, is composed of a large number of active neural cells. The associated memory corresponds to the neural activity pattern of overlapping coverage. This means that each memory is distributed and stored in many parts of the brain. In this way, the long-term memory in the brain is similar to that in holographic imaging. Long-term memory also has many disadvantages.

Easy to generate errors

Emotional impact

Can be changed during recall

Influence of features of long-term memory on User Interface Design

The main revelation of long-term memory is that people need tools to strengthen it. Since humans need techniques to enhance memory, it is clear that software designers should try to provide software that meets this need. At least, designers should avoid developing systems that cause long-term memory load.

For example, when designing a user password protection question, a general system usually selects several questions for users. However, some questions may not be clearly remembered, he may also need to record the answer in another place, which increases the user's long-term memory burden. For example

It should be designed to enable users to set their own password protection questions, so that users can set them to their most familiar questions, which makes it easy to think of the answer.

For interactive systems, the feature of long-term memory is that user interface consistency helps learning and long-term retention.

The more consistent the operations of different functions, or the more consistent the operations of different types of objects, the less you need to learn. Consistent user interface performance greatly reduces the user's long-term memory pressure.