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Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

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Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#41

Post by agf »

JasonCEC wrote: post #38
kurthr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be missing something... why isn't 4 a midpoint of 1-7 and 6 a midpoint of 1-13? I'd think you would want an even number of points to prevent over-selection (like 0-7 or 1-8).

The psychological effect is "tendency towards the mean", and in this case, the mid-point isn't the mean. Forcing individuals to choose a score above or below the mean yields a better sampling of the true distribution in this case.

What? 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 28. 28 / 7 = 4. So 4 is both the midpoint and the mean?

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#42

Post by isostatic »

joshuaheard wrote: post #32

This is why phone numbers are 7 digits long: xxx-xxxx. Then, add another "chunk" for the area code: (xxx) xxx-xxxx.

Phone numbers are 11 digits long, usually split into 5 and 6, but sometimes 4/7 or 3/8, and even 6/5 and 7/4.

Not that anyone remembers phone numbers nowadays.

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#43

Post by isostatic »

user5994461 wrote: post #13
baxtr wrote: post #8

Miller’s law says that people can remember 7+/-2 things at a time. I think that’s why people usually like structured lists much better than a unstructured, unsorted laundry list.

People can remember only 4 things. The few who can remember more are the exception. That would be a much better goal for product design. You don't want designers to pack things by 7 or 9. It's too many.

I tend to remember 3 things when it comes to things like shopping or tasks. Add a fourth and I usually end up getting something wrong or forgetting it.

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#44

Post by iambateman »

JasonCEC wrote: post #33
iambateman wrote: post #3

You know how people say: “on a scale of 1-10”? I’ve used the principle of Millers law to start asking people to measure on a scale of 1-7. Universally, people balk at the scale. But I explain to them that most people can’t tell the difference between 2 and 3 on a ten point scale. If you can’t articulate a difference, there’s no use in the measurement. Seven is great because you get more than the simplicity of 1-5. So…

There is actually a whole theory around this, and has lots of implications for the designs of hedonic and sensory scales. I work on modeling human sensory perception and preference of food and beverage products, and have had to design scales that work as a true "metric"; Most scales suffer from 3 primary problems: 1) avoidance of the endpoints 2) tendency towards the mean 3) minimum information gain For example; on a…

Perfect, I’m screenshottimg this answer and showing it to my friends when they get weird when I ask them how much they like their beer on a scale of 1-7.

Because science.

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#45

Post by vec »

isostatic wrote: post #39
pySSK wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The international Baccalaureate uses a 7 point scale: http://www.isnsz.com/media/images/Assessment_6.width-800.png I generally like my scales to be logarithmic. At work, I made the following scale to explain difficulty of technical items to non-technical people. It works quite well: Effort Scale 1: Easy peasy 2: Trivial but time-consuming 3: Some invention required and non-trivial 4: Invention required 5: Lot of inve…

With Uber I considered a 4 to be "nothing wrong", and reserve 5 for "amazing service above and beyond". However it seems that drivers who have an average of say "4.2", despite being perfectly fine and giving above and beyond service 1 in 5 times, gets kicked off. This means that 5 is acceptable and there's no way to mark above acceptable. I'm odd, I don't expect every trip I get to be above average. That's clearly no…

I'm the same way. My instinctive reading of a 5 star system maps it onto a bell curve. So if I received exactly the service I expected, with zero complaints, that's obviously a 3 out of 5. 5 stars means two standard deviations above my expectations. It feels to me like a company that gets nothing but 4 and 5 star reviews should be taking issue with their marketing department for setting expectations way too low.

But in an Uber, giving less than a perfect score can get someone fired. So it's 5 stars unless the driver literally spits on me, and then it might be 5 stars and a complaint. Anything lower than a 5 star rating feels unethical, like stiffing a waiter on a tip.

What I can't figure out is how this is of any use to Uber. They have created a "metric" where a large chunk of their customers regard answering honestly as a social faux pas, at best, so what do they think they're measuring?

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#46

Post by tiglionabbit »

agf wrote: post #41
JasonCEC wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The psychological effect is "tendency towards the mean", and in this case, the mid-point isn't the mean. Forcing individuals to choose a score above or below the mean yields a better sampling of the true distribution in this case.

What? 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 = 28. 28 / 7 = 4. So 4 is both the midpoint and the mean?

Perhaps people don't differentiate between 1-7 and 0-7 and assume that 3.5 is always going to be the midpoint?

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#47

Post by ams6110 »

isostatic wrote: post #39
pySSK wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The international Baccalaureate uses a 7 point scale: http://www.isnsz.com/media/images/Assessment_6.width-800.png I generally like my scales to be logarithmic. At work, I made the following scale to explain difficulty of technical items to non-technical people. It works quite well: Effort Scale 1: Easy peasy 2: Trivial but time-consuming 3: Some invention required and non-trivial 4: Invention required 5: Lot of inve…

With Uber I considered a 4 to be "nothing wrong", and reserve 5 for "amazing service above and beyond". However it seems that drivers who have an average of say "4.2", despite being perfectly fine and giving above and beyond service 1 in 5 times, gets kicked off. This means that 5 is acceptable and there's no way to mark above acceptable. I'm odd, I don't expect every trip I get to be above average. That's clearly no…

People know this and the"real" Uber rating scale is a ten point scale between 4 and 5. Same with Amazon product reviews. Anything under 4 doesn't get a look.

I think a simple thumbs up/thumbs down would be just as effective.

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#48

Post by lalaithion »

Related to the idea of chunking, I remembered 15 words easily, using a clever technique that I read about a few years ago. Instead of trying to remember each word individually, I remembered scenes. This enabled me to remember more than 7 words, because the chunks no longer were words, but were combinations of words.

For example, for the words "king" and "hammer", I imagined a king hammer ruling over his subjects. For "milk" and "fish", I imagined a fish with udders. They're silly, but they work.

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#49

Post by mjrpes »

catnaroek wrote: post #40

I managed to remember the first 18 elements of the list. On a more relevant note, it's easier to remember a large number of things when they're related to each other in meaningful ways. So the results of this little memory test aren't very good predictors of your ability to remember things in a real-world setting.

Worth pointing out how great (and easy to learn and master) a mnemonic device it is to create a story from the list...

The skinny cat with an apple on it's head ran after the ball that led it to the tree with square leaves. Each leaf was actually a picture and if you looked closer you could see a head (of a fat cat) in the picture. You zoom in and the picture becomes a movie and you see the fat cat walk up to a house and open the door... etc etc

The more absurd the image you create the easier it is to remember. You also have much better long term memory. It's been half an hour since I memorized the list and I've drawn my attention to 5 other HN posts, but here I am able to recite the list 100% accurately and without hesistation...

Cat apple ball tree square head house door box car king hammer milk fish book tape arrow flowers key shoe

This is nothing against Miller's Law though... as who goes about creating visual stories to memorize user interfaces :)

Re: Miller’s Law – A Rule in Product Design and Life Management

#50

Post by aragorn2 »

Off topic: I got all 20. What you do is invent a story in pictures.

A cat was playing with a ball under the tree. An apple fell from tree on cats head. The cat squared around the apple and ran inside the house through a small door into her box. King dad drove in his car, took out huge hammer from the trunk and hit the box of milk. Milk sprayed all over the house and inside the fish tank. Fish got restless and caused a cross bow from the wall to fire an arrow through the book that was all taped over. Mom in her red shoes came and took the key under the flower.

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