memory Articles & Videos

  • Don’t Outsource the Learning: Why Human-Led Research Still Matters in the Age of AI

    Even if AI matches researcher-output quality, human-led research will remain essential — the team learning from observing users can't be outsourced.

  • Alt Text: What to Write

    Images are decorative, functional, or informative. Skip alt text for decorative. Describe the action for functional. Convey the message for informative.

  • Alt Text: Not Always Needed

    Write alt text that communicates an image's purpose without repeating page content. Focus on meaning rather than visual description.

  • 7 Tips for Memorable and Easy-to-Understand Imagery

    A few relevant, high-quality visuals placed next to associated text can boost users’ comprehension of your content and its memorability.

  • The Picture-Superiority Effect: Harness the Power of Visuals

    People often remember visuals better than words. Designers can leverage the picture-superiority effect to make their products memorable and learnable.

  • Memory Recognition and Recall in User Interfaces

    Recalling items from scratch is harder than recognizing the correct option in a list of choices because the extra context helps users retrieve information from memory.

  • Psychology for UX: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about principles of human psychology and how they relate to UX design.

  • Challenges for Screen-Reader Users on Mobile

    Using a screen reader on mobile is challenging because users must access information sequentially and they cannot easily scan page content. Screen-reader users do not consider accessibility menus helpful.

  • Support Recall Instead of Recognition in UI Design

    To strengthen people’s memory skills, we should design interfaces that help users practice recall.

  • Spatial Memory: Why It Matters for UX Design

    With repeated practice, users develop imprecise memory of objects and content in a UI, but still need additional visual and textual signals to help them find a specific item.

  • The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories

    Cognitive biases change the way that we recall past events. The peak–end rule focuses our memories around the most intense moments of an experience and the way an experience ends.

  • Working Memory and External Memory

    Human working memory holds information relevant to the current task; a physical or virtual external memory can help in tasks with a high working-memory burden.

  • The Power Law of Learning: Consistency vs. Innovation in User Interfaces

    Across many tasks, learning curves show an initial learning period, followed by a plateau of optimal efficiency.

  • How Chunking Helps Content Processing

    Chunking is a concept that originates from the field of cognitive psychology. UX professionals can break their text and multimedia content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and remember it better.

  • Priming and User Interfaces

    Exposure to a stimulus influences behavior in subsequent, possibly unrelated tasks. This is called priming; priming effects abound in usability and web design.

  • Help People Create Passwords That They Can Actually Remember

    Human memory studies can inform design so they help people remember passwords. This makes customers happy, saves money and time, and increases security.

  • Password Creation: 3 Ways To Make It Easier

    By making password requirements visible upfront, allowing users to unmask the password, and showing a strength meter, designers can improve the frustrating user experience of creating a password.

  • Short-Term Memory and Web Usability

    The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations.