Summary: People have very limited ability to keep information in their working memory while performing tasks, so user interfaces should be designed accordingly: to minimize memory load. One way of doing so is to offload items to external memory by showing them on the screen.
Related Article
Working Memory and External Memory
Human working memory holds information relevant to the current task; when tasks are too hard, users should be able to offload some of the working-memory burden to user-interface features that can serve as an external memory.
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