Short-term Memory

The capacity to store a small amount of information in mind and keep it readily available for a short period of time.

We are limited to being able to hold ~7 chunks of information in our short-term memory at any given moment with each chunk fading after 20–30 seconds. We use it to keep track of information in order to achieve tasks, but we often have trouble remembering what information we’ve already seen. Designers must be mindful of this limit when displaying information to users and ensure it’s both necessary and relevant.

Our brains are good at recognizing something we’ve seen before, but not at keeping new information ready to be used. We can support this by making it clear what information has already been viewed (e.g. visually differentiating visited links and providing breadcrumbs links).

We can lessen the burden of memorizing critical information by carrying it over from screen to screen when necessary (e.g. comparison tables that make comparing multiple items easy).

##Origin Memory is believed to be divided into short-term and long- term storage as early as the 19th century. The classical model of memory, developed in the 1960s, assumed that memories move from short-term to long-term storage over time. This model is referred to as the ‘modal model’ and has been most famously detailed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968.