RE: The Myth of Seven, Plus or Minus Two

[Steven Jong <SteveFJong -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Eric Dunn points out: "Is Google wrong to present you with thousands of 
links? Should Google and other
search engines stop after 7+/-2? Of course not. They present all the 
information
relevant to the search and prioritise it by some means."

"Should they do it? Of course not" is also argument by assertion, as I 
pointed out in my previous posting. In fact, Google *does* stop its 
presentation at 7+/-2 by default--almost. They present their search 
results ten links at a time; they also limit their display of pages of 
results to ten at a time. (That's argument by inspection 8^) Why 10 and 
not 20? Why not 100? It would be interesting to ask.

In a later reply, Eric is blunt about people who apply theory: "I 
believe that any blind adherence to an approach
(scientific or otherwise) stems from the basic insecurity
many have with defending their own thoughts and beliefs."

Now, as the person who spoke up in agreement with applying Miller's 
approach, I must say I take this comment (which, after all, is an ad 
hominem attack) rather personally. I can defend my own thoughts and 
beliefs well enough, thank you. My only handicap is that I read 
TECHWR-L on digest, so I don't get to reply immediately. Are we to 
accept that having an approach is OK, but if it's "blind adherence," it 
reflects a personal failing? Who decides whether it's blind or not? 
This objection sounds a little like dismissing economic data as "fuzzy 
math;" it drifts toward know-nothingness.

The research I mentioned was made into depth versus breadth of menu 
trees. I have the sense that the work has been forgotten in the 
paradigm shift to browser interfaces, but I think it still applies, as 
does much of the work in form design that lies equally forlorn by the 
side of the information superhighway. But I digress...

In candor, I have looked into the Miller backlash, and found (as the 
first hit in my Google test), a nice summary of anti-Miller citations:

http://ronz.blogspot.com/2002_11_17_ronz_archive.html

I suggest you don't adhere to them blindly 8^)


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