Unit 3 How People Remember

This chapter is on how people remember.

The first thing that is addressed is our short term memory which is limited. This type of memory is used when you are memorizing a phone number to call someone and don't have a pen you need that information for a second but it wont be important enough to remember it later. there is only so much information you can have in your short term memory before you forget it. So don't ask people to remember information from one place to another, if you they will probably forget especially if ask them to do anything else before they have completed that task .

People remember only four items at once. people can remember three to four things in their working memory as long as they are not distracted one of the strategies to remember information that is used so they don't forget is chunking information into groups. for this reason phone numbers are separated into groups instead of a long string.

which one is easier to memorize?    509-698-3378 or  5096983378  

most people would automatically shift towards the numbers that are separated by the hyphen. This  four rule applies to both short and long term memory. So if you limit the information to four items or group them into four chunks. people try to use external aids to keep from using there memory, so giving options like lists, calendars, notes, or appointment reminders can be very helpful.

Continuing on to more of the long term memory;  for information to stick people have to use it over and over again. The transition of moving something from short term memory to long term memory is by repeating it a lot or applying it to something else already learned. Repetition physically changes the brain. This topic leads into talking about schema which is basically what we perceive things to be, an example is, if we said what an eye is we might say it consists of eyelashes, eye lid, and eyeball, in reality its a lot more than that, our idea of it is the schema. People use schemata to store information in long term memory. So one of the major reasons we do user research is to identify there schemata that the audience your going after has. Other ways to help with memory is to eliminate memory loads, its better to not have people recall any information if possible it's much easier for someone to recognize information than recall it. ways to help people recognize information is by using concrete terms and icons, let them rest and recover, try not to interrupt them if they are in the process of remembering. Make the most important things at the beginning and end of whatever you are trying to convey stuff in the middle is often forgotten.

People reconstruct memory each time they remember them, memories change and thats why eyewhitness testimonies are unreliable. you can alter peoples perception in the way you talk and the words you say can effect greatly what they remember.

It is impossible for your brain to remember every event in your life, it just is not possible so it has to decided what to remember and what to forget. and it does not always makes decisions that we would find helpful. People are always going to forget and what they forget is not something they can help.

Designing with forgetting in mind is a must. If information is important it need to be repeated and not assumed that it is learned, provide it for the learners in your design or have a way for them to find it easily.

This was a shorter chapter but it was interesting I felt like I could really relate to this chapter in the way I think about things and when I was reading it, I was like wow that does makes sense, and yeah I do do that. This was a very interesting chapter.