Miller’s Law: How to Limit and Group Information on Your Website for Better UX/UI Design

Web design and web development are two interrelated fields that require both technical and creative skills. One of the main goals of web design and development is to create user-friendly and engaging websites that meet the needs and expectations of the target audience.

To achieve a good UX/UI design, web designers and developers need to apply various principles and guidelines that are based on human psychology, behavior, and cognition. One of these principles is Miller’s Law, which is a useful tool to understand how users process and remember information on a website.

What is Miller’s Law?

Miller’s Law was proposed by the American psychologist George Miller in 1956, based on his observation that the human short-term memory has a limited capacity to store information. According to Miller’s Law, the average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory at a time.

Miller’s Law also suggests that one way to overcome this limitation is to use chunking, which is a technique of organizing information into smaller and meaningful groups or units. For example, instead of remembering a 10-digit phone number as 1234567890, users can remember it as 123-456-7890.

How to use Miller’s Law in UX design

One way to use Miller’s Law in UX design is to limit the number of options or choices that users have on a website. Web designers can use Miller’s Law as a guideline to limit the number of options or choices to 7 (plus or minus 2), or group them into smaller categories or submenus.

Another way is to simplify the content and layout of a website by breaking down the content into smaller chunks or sections that are easy to read or scan, using headings, subheadings, bullet points, lists, tables, graphs, icons, images, or videos.

How to use Miller’s Law in UI design

One way to use Miller’s Law in UI design is to limit the number of colors, fonts, icons, or other visual elements that are used on a website to 7 (plus or minus 2), or use them in a consistent and meaningful way.

Another way is to simplify the forms, sliders, menus, tabs, or other interactive components by reducing the number of fields, options, steps, or layers, or grouping them into smaller and logical chunks or stages.

Real examples of web design that apply Miller’s Law

• Netflix: limits the number of menu items on its navigation bar and groups the content into smaller, meaningful sections such as Trending Now, New Releases, and Top Picks for You.
• Ebay: limits the number of options on its homepage to 7 (plus or minus 2) and groups products into smaller, relevant categories.
• Spotify: limits the number of menu items on its navigation bar to 5 and groups music into personalized sections such as Made For You and Recently Played.

Conclusions

Miller’s Law is a useful principle that web designers and developers can use to improve the UX and UI design of their websites. By applying it, they can limit and group the information and options that users have on a website, simplify the content and layout, and enhance user satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and conversion.

Bibliography

[1] G. A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”, Psychological Review, vol. 63, no. 2, pp. 81-97, 1956.