The Rule of Sevens, or, Taming the Tab-Slut
April 2, 2009
If you’re an information architect or user experience designer, or even if you’re not, you’ve probably heard the “Rule of Seven” axiom. That is, Seven (plus or minus 2) is the magical number of things your brain can comfortably hold in working memory before it freaks out and either shuts down or needs help. Call it “channel capacity” or “user-friendliness”(why does that term seem so antiquated?), call it what you will. Information architects know that chunking things into seven or less items or categories in a navigation bar is just a good, humane thing to do. It has been posited that a tightly-knit group of seven people is an optimal community size, because above that number communication tends to break down and not everyone interacts naturally with each other and cliques begin forming. Seven digit phone numbers, seven days of the week, seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the Magnificent Seven…the list goes on and on if you want to look for it. You can speculate as to why there is this natural limit on our perceptual machinery (my tongue-in-cheek hypothesis is that it’s the average of the number of fingers on one hand and the total number of fingers) but whatever the real reason, I accept it as a nice and useful constraint.
Recently, I started thinking about applying the Rule of Sevens (plus or minus two) to my own version of “Getting Things Done”. You see, I am a tab-slut.
If you walked by my monitor at any point in the day (or night) you would probably be astounded at the sheer number of tabs I have open at one time in my browser. On average I’d say I have at least 20 to 30 tabs open. And one day I asked myself, Why? Why does each and every one of these different websites need to be open? Is this a symptom of ADD? Or am I just lazy? I mean, you could say the same thing when you see the stack of dirty dishes in my sink (though I’m not as bad about that).
So as an experiment in productivity, I decided to impose the following rule on my browsing:
Thou shalt not have more than 7 browser tabs open at any given time.
Of course this also implies that Thou shalt not have multiple browser windows open (if you can help it).
I welcome anyone else to try this experiment with me and share your discoveries. I promise to post my thoughts at the end of today, because after tomorrow, I will leaving for my honeymoon, where I have decided to take things a step further and go completely off the grid. Wish me luck! (I’m gonna need it! Bad!)
Related Posts: Reflections of a tab-a-holic, Stuffing our faces with information
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@absurd_human | April 6, 2009 at 11:01 am
Is that why my browsers keep crashing?
I’m not even sure I could restrict myself to 7 windows with 7 tabs each. For now I’m just trying to have no more than 7 applications open at a time…
This should make you feel less ADD – When I used to keep the warning active in Firefox (“You are about to close [absurd number] of tabs…”) the highest number I ever got up to was over 200 tabs in a single browser window. This is with at least 2 browsers and usually around 10 Firefox and 2 IE windows always open. If you are browsing with 20-30 tabs and only a few windows, you are doing just fine. The sheer amount of data we are expected (required?) to process is insane, and the antiquated keyboard, mouse, and even touchscreen are becoming insufficient and useless as we expand our reach of people we communicate with, information we consume/produce, and the amount of data (bits) to present or consume the information we require (audio, video, 3D, holograms, etc.)
I think there will be some big changes over the next 10 years or so in the way we produce and consume data – hopefully the technology will adjust to the way humans interact, rather than requiring humans to adjust to the technology.
Irwin | April 8, 2009 at 10:17 am
@absurd_human: Yes. That’s probably why your browser keeps crashing.
200!! Wow. You are a mad person.
I think you’re right, though. Since we can now create and have access to incredible amounts of data, it’s quite understandable that we’re feeling overloaded. And I think you’re right: we will need touch, different display surfaces, maybe holographic projections and manipulations. But in addition, we need better ways to filter so that we can reduce the amount from the start.
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Madman | May 20, 2011 at 1:09 am
I’m currently at 586, with the 1st one being like 3 months old. Beat that. If you’re wondering why my PC didn’t crash yet, it’s because 90% of those sites are not loaded(I don’t have 24/7 net around here)
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