Watch

Miller's law 0:34

A 34-second explainer of Miller's law, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.

The Miller's law explainer. Prefer to do it yourself? Try the interactive demo.

Try the interactive Miller's law demo

What this video covers

Working memory can hold roughly seven items, plus or minus two, at once. Exceed that limit and things start to fall out. The constraint isn't about intelligence; it's about the size of the mental workspace everyone is working with.

That's your working memory limit in action. The number wasn't made up: George Miller measured it in 1956 and found the same result across people, senses, and kinds of information.

More UX term videos

All UX term videos