People easily forget. Users easily forget.

That’s a statement we can’t go against. It’s a fact.

As a designer, we need to create tools considering humans limitation to support the nature of cognition. Cognition drives user behavior. Memory is one of the processes included in it.

Memory and attention walk together. The attention permits the person to focus on something that will be consequently processed by memory.

We can work considering 3 basic types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

A Shopping Experience

Picture a woman entering a physical clothing store. While she enters, a fragrance is inhaled in milliseconds. Her sensory memory is in action. The stimuli don’t require any conscious attention. Forward, she relates it to a comfortable and pleasant place because of the information she has stored previously.

Exploring the store, she will see products interesting for her. The price is a decisive factor to buy. So she picks up the selected clothes, put together and check each label to compare the price. Her short-term memory is supported at this moment because she can see the prices together instead of needing to keep each information in her mind having problems remembering each one to compare. Without the price tags, needing to answer the price of each product, it would be much more complex.

After selecting the cheaper piece, she goes towards the store cashier but in the middle of the way, she sees a dress so similar to what her lovely grandmother used to wear. A memory of her childhood comes up and in an emotional act, she changes her mind and decides to buy the dress. The long-term memory activated gave her meaning in the shop process, making her opt for the emotional value instead of the price.

These memory types are related among them in different ways and situations. Below, I quickly explain more about each one followed by examples:

1. Sensory Memory

That’s the shortest-term element of memory. No manipulation of the incoming data occurs. It maintains information only for a few hundred milliseconds according to Haluk Öğmen and Michael H. Herzog’s article. After that, the information will fade away or the input is quickly transferred to the short-term memory.

It can be received through the basic 5 senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste.

Examples of sensory memory use

The sound of an app notification

The sensory memory is activated when we hear the sound of a notification. If the sensory memory persists, the information connects to another memory type that will tell us the meaning of that.

The notification gives us that a signal that there is a new message or there is an event for something we are subscribed to.

The sound design normally has a supportive role. It links to another design aspect of a product or service, boosts the experience, and supports the brand.

Like the ICQ notification that is stored in our long-term memory. Can you remember it?

“Uh-Oh”

Sounds accompanying interactions can increase stimuli on the users and create memorable flows and operations.

Business logos in the storefront on an avenue

When we are in a car passing in a row of businesses, our long-term memory that learned about those brand logos will know them and what those signs would look like for us in a fraction of a second, is defined for our iconic memory, which is a part of sensory memory.

The candy smell that attracts to the candy store

There is a candy store near my house that is not so attractive visually outside, but they invest hard in the smell of it. Every time I pass in front of it, I want to eat candies. Coincidence? I guess not.

2. Short-Term Memory

(often correspondently to Working Memory)

It stores information received recently by sensory memory. It’s brief and limited, holding information for seconds to one minute.

George Miller, the psychologist who wrote “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” (1956) suggested that people can store between five and nine items in short-term memory.

More recent research affirmed that people are able to store 4 chunks of content.

When it’s not rehearsed or actively maintained, the information lasts few seconds to one minute.

Although there are some individuals variations, the average ordinary customer is included in the majority group of limited use of short-term memory. Work considering it.

Examples of short-term memory use

Comparison tool

The ability to compare easily is very useful to help users deal with their short-term memory limitations. When a user needs to decide the best option to buy among other interesting alternatives, without a dedicated page to compare selected items, they would need to check one per one, be frustrated to try to keep in mind the details that they will forget quickly and if they don’t give up, they could use a paper and pen to take notes and appeal to an external cognition resource creating their own comparison system physically.

Comparison page of Verizon showing 4 smartphones and their details

Business logos in the storefront on an avenue

When we are in a car passing in a row of businesses, our long-term memory that learned about those brand logos will know them and what those signs would look like for us in a fraction of a second, is defined for our iconic memory, which is a part of sensory memory.

The candy smell that attracts to the candy store

There is a candy store near my house that is not so attractive visually outside, but they invest hard in the smell of it. Every time I pass in front of it, I want to eat candies. Coincidence? I guess not.

The chunking technique

This is a memorization technique we are got used to with phone numbers. Which is easier to memorize?

Two blocks of numbers: 1. showing numbers in sequence and only 3 numbers grouped in the end and 2. showing numbers separated by chunks of 4 digits

According to Daniel Bor, a neuroscientist author of The Ravenous Brain, it’s a human natural tendency to see patterns and work better with them, as we know also based on the Gestalt laws.

The same we can do with words.

A random list with many items will be better to memorize if similar items are gathered by categories.

Visited links

Change links colors for visited pages is already an expected behavior. It supports short-term memory limitations.

Google search result page showing a highlighted visited page.

If it’s not applied, we take the risk of making the users walk in circles. Making them revisit pages already navigated and confused about which way to go. A disoriented user with a reduced sense of mastery will give up faster.

Medium app screenshot showing the list of articles already viewed.

Products added to the cart

When we are in an eCommerce where a lot of products will be added to the cart, it’s normal to forget what was added previously.

Without a way to check the selected products, probably the time to shop will be longer since duplicate products can be sent to the cart, and after we would need to adjust the product’s quantities.

In the image below, this supermarket offers an approach that makes it easier. For the products already added, the CTA will disappear and will be replaced by a quantity input indicating how many of that product is added.

For live presentations and instructions

If we know that most people only can keep a small quantity of information at a given time, it’s understandable that when they are exposed to long explanations, few of it will be retained to relate to what will come next.

So to have the audience following the content it’s important to turn the information into few clusters easier to be remembered and linked along the whole process.

A complementary tip: Don’t use a lot of texts on presentation slides because it will compete with the oral information and make it harder for the audience to pay attention, a cognition process connected to memory, and to store the information coming from different channels at the same time.

3. Long-Term Memory

Long-term memory is the final, the permanent (semi) stage of memory. Theoretically, it has infinite capacity and what is stored there can remain indefinitely, till the end of our days.

The information get by the short-term memory is kept for a short time and rehearsals make it possible to maintain the information for a period sufficient for the formation of an enduring memory trace in the long-term memory storage.

The more meaningful an item is to the individual the more likely they are to retain such information for a significant period of time.

Examples of long-term memory use

Recognizing patterns and symbols

Heart for favorites, star to highlight, magnifying glass for search, plus symbol to add something new, checkmark for positive feedback, among others, are examples of the associations we do base on the storage knowledge we have in our long-term memory.

Symbols were always part of mankind’s communication. And it was natural that they migrated to the digital world.

Memories we recall often tend to be more present and become stronger.

When the designer opts for round elements for the checkbox, they can create a confusing interpretation because it’s storage for us that the round icon is for radio and the square element is used for the checkbox.

Connecting to emotions

The ability to retain users is largely related to the emotional factor be used for interactions. Of course, it happens when the feedback is positive.

The emotions can be triggered in different ways. Fun writing, pleasant interfaces, sending gratification for solving a problem, accessible solutions. So usually having a positive experience, the users will come back and continue making use of the product or service.

The opposite can occur, losing users because of generating bad emotional feedback. Long-term memory can also store a general negative feeling because that’s the way the brain protects the human. In this way, the memory will help the human to repel the urge to repeat the experience.

Using known terms

Choose a communication based on common knowledge is the best way to talk to people without blocks. Even though the content is about a complex topic, if it would be presented to people without technical knowledge, it needs to be written with a simple and easy language structure.

We have to use the stored information to work in our favor, rather than forcing the receivers to learn new things to allow them to understand. What makes the process more difficult, and obviously, it will have less engagement.

The Takeaway

Memory is an important cognition process but it has limitations. Understanding that we need to walk on common paths most people already walked before makes the processes easier.

Create new registration takes time and definitely, we don’t want to give extra work to our users when they decide to use the products and services we offer.

Be creative but don’t reinvent the wheel.