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UX glossary · engl. Working Memory

Working Memory

Working memory holds information for a short time so you can work with it. It has very little capacity, so interfaces should ask people to remember as little as possible.

Imagine you’re logging in to your online banking. The app texts you a six-digit code. You switch to your messages, read the code, switch back, and suddenly you’re not sure about the fourth digit. So you go back again. For just a few seconds you had to hold six numbers in your head, and even that was a stretch.

The place where you held them is called working memory.

Explained simply

Working memory is the part of our memory where we hold information for a brief moment while working with it. A good comparison is a sticky note next to your keyboard: you jot something down, use it and then throw the note away. Only this note is tiny, and anything you don’t keep repeating fades fast.

The best-known model comes from psychologists Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch in 1974. It splits working memory into several components: a phonological loop for speech and sound, a visuospatial sketchpad for images and positions, and a central executive that directs attention. In 2000, Baddeley added a fourth component, the episodic buffer, which links information from different sources into a coherent whole.

Working memory vs. short-term memory

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they don’t mean quite the same thing. Short-term memory mainly describes the fact that we store something briefly. Working memory emphasizes that we do something with that information at the same time: compare, calculate, decide. For the basics, see Basics of Human Perception: Short-Term Memory.

How much fits is debated. The often-quoted “seven, plus or minus two” goes back to George Miller in 1956. After reviewing many studies, psychologist Nelson Cowan argued in 2001 for a smaller limit of about four units of information, known as chunks. The exact number depends on the task and the person. What’s clear: there isn’t much room.

For design, this means every piece of information people have to remember across several steps adds to their cognitive load, the mental effort a task requires. Once working memory is full, mistakes happen or people have to jump back.

An example

Here’s an example: a comparison site for phone plans shows each plan on its own detail page. Anyone who wants to compare three plans has to remember price, data allowance and contract length while jumping between pages. Many lose track.

After the redesign, people can add plans to a shortlist with one click and view them side by side in a comparison table. The information now lives on the screen instead of in their heads.

In practice

  • Show it, don’t make people remember it. Key details from earlier steps should stay visible, such as an order summary at checkout. Plenty of examples are collected in Forms Nobody Abandons.
  • Group information. An IBAN in groups of four or a phone number in blocks is easier to take in than a long string of digits.
  • Offer tools as external memory. Shortlists, comparison tables and codes that fill in automatically take work off people’s minds.

Related terms

Cognitive Load, Miller’s Law, Progressive Disclosure, Mental Model

Sources

More terms

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