The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Not relevant for design

Now and then the narrow bandwidth of lists presented on computer screens and bullet points on PowerPoint slides is said to be a virtue, a claim justified by loose reference to George Miller’s classic 1956 paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.” That essay reviews psychological experiments that discovered people had a hard time remembering more than about 7 unrelated pieces of really dull data all at once. These studies on memorizing nonsense then led some interface designers to conclude that only 7 items belong on a list or a slide, a conclusion which can be sustained only by not reading the paper. In fact Miller’s paper neither states nor implies rules for the amount of information to be shown in a presentation (except possibly for slides that consist of nonsense syllables that the audience must memorize and repeat back to a psychologist). Indeed, the deep point of Miller’s paper is to suggest strategies, such as placing information within a context, that extend the reach of memory beyond tiny clumps of data. George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” Psychological Review, 63 (1956), 81-97 (here).

At Williams College in September 2000, I saw George Miller give a presentation that used an optimal number of bullet points on an optimal number of slides—zero. Just a nice straightforward talk with a long narrative structure. (George and I were there to pick up honorary degrees during the dedication of a new science building at Williams College. In addition, Donald Knuth’s talk as well as my own deployed no bullet lists.)

“Williams College to Honor Eight Renowned Scientists,” September 23, 2000.