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winooski
Thx for the feedback. Whenever I reference I study I do cite authors and publication, but perhaps I should be providing more? Please feel free to offer suggestions.
Bill
As you mention, there is a rich body of academic work which can't be adequately described in a column format. Here's my point. This is important to explore, and the average person will never dive into the academic work. Whether the limit is 3, 4, 7 or 12 (depending on the circumstance) the important thing to understand is that there are limits, and, if in popularizing this, it becames over simplified (and how can it not) that is a lesser sin than not touching on it at all. Ask most designers or online markets and they've never heard of working memory, channel capacity, satisficing or bounded rationality. So, I intend to keep bringing these concepts to the fore, which means, I suspect, that you'll continue to question my homework. I'm good with that, as it accomplishes my original objective of bringing these concepts to light and creating dialogue around them. The only other option would be to leave them in the dark world of conflicting academic studies. It's almost impossible to put forward an idea that someone won't take exception to, as we're still discovering the workings of our mind and there's new evidence brought forward every day. Even in your first rebuttal, I don't agree with your blending the concepts of executive memory function and retrieval from long term memory. That is a misleading representation of how memory works.
But the dialogue keeps us looking and discovering, and that's important. So I'll keep writing, and hope that others, including you, keeps questioning.
Ahh..Bill and his ever critical eye.
Bill, I suggest you read Miller's paper again and do a little research into how memory works before broadsiding someone else's work. Working memory, and channel capacity, refers to distinguishing between alternatives in executive memory, not in reciting the names of states or remembering faces. The two memory tasks are completely different, one involving sequential retrieval from long term memory, one involving loading either unidimensional or multidimensional alternatives into executive memory and "working" on it to make a distinction. Two completely different concepts. I acknowledge that the magic number 7 is not an absolute, Miller makes this clear. But I never said it was. I said that Miller's work shows that there are definite cognitive limits to working memory and we have to keep this in mind when thinking about presenting alternatives, such as on a search page. We've seen this pattern over and over in hundreds of user sessions.
Regarding language, you're getting confused. Verbal language existed before pictographs or hieroglyphics or, for that matter, likely cave paintings. It's verbal language I'm refering to, not written language. It was verbal language that enabled the passing along of accumulated wisdom. Written language helped us archive it more effectively.
Another study confirms my view of working memory, and follows up on Miller's work.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080423171519.htm
As mentioned, the cognitive capacity of working memory is limited. Bill Slawski completely misses the point of Miller's work, which was meant to test unidimensional vs multidimensional elements and the capacity of working memory. The fact that he used musical tones was really irrelevant. He used that as an example of a unidimensional variation. It could have been the height of pop bottles, or different shades of green. The important factor is the difference between processing in working memory (and the use of chunking) and retrieval from long term memory. Bill, in his examples, is mixing up the two very distinct and different activities.
Danny
You're right..we've never found eye tracking able to convince CEO's to embrace search if they don't get it. But it does help convince them about the importance of good SEO or SEM. If they want to move into search, it shows them they neighborhoods they want to be in. And for that reason, it can be a powerful influencer, especially if their main competition is sitting at the top of the Golden Triangle. And the reason you won't find the eye tracking chart at SEMPO is that it wasn't a SEMPO study. The first one was a joint effort between Enquiro, Did-It and Eyetools.
Gord
What we need is a heat map of consumer behavior for those reluctant CEO's..something that showed where most of the eyeballs go when people are in a mood to buy. That might do the trick! Hmmm...I wonder....
Hey...Danny. Good catch. I followed up with Google on this, as it was puzzling to me and I forgot to follow up with Nick and Diane at the time. So the explanation is posted on my blog...
http://www.outofmygord.com/archive/2007/07/31/Breaking-Auction-Rank-Explained.aspx
Thx
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Story: Human Hardware: The Subconscious Side of Search