Cognition: Memory, Attention, and Learning - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 127

The subjects in the second interface were less able to describe how to solve the
puzzle, but were slightly faster at solving it (Golightly et al. 1999 ; O'Hara and
Payne 1998 ). This effect, of increased response time leading to fewer, more
thoughtful, commands has been seen before (in a study by Forgie cited in Nickerson
1969 , p. 171).
These results raise interesting questions about interface design. If learning is an
important feature of the system, then interfaces that encourage reflection and
learning about the domain may be more suitable, even though it takes more time to
do the task. Tutoring systems that support the development of more explicit rep-
resentations, for example, will help learners be able to explain and later teach how
to do a task.
5.2.1.7 Prospective Memory
Prospective memory is also important for users. It is a form of memory that
involves remembering to do something at the appropriate time based on either
events or absolute times. The storage of information for future activities (both in
the short- and long-term) is prone to failure and appears limited. There have been
tools for centuries to help with retrieving these items from memory (strings tied
around fingers), but there are also now computational-based tools to support
prospective memory, such as time schedulers, calendars, and To Do lists, partic-
ularly on smartphones.
5.2.2 Mnemonics and Aids to Memory
There are several ways of improving memory performance—both storage and
retrieval—which exploit the way that memory is arranged and operates. The use of
mnemonics, for example, is a technique that helps to increase the amount or
quality of information, or the speed at which it is retrieved.
One of the first mnemonics is the method of loci (in Latin, 'places'). In this
mnemonic, a speaker (typically) would store in memory something familiar to
them, like a set of locations in their house. They would then associate the items
that they later wanted to with these locations. Retrieving a set of items in this way
is much more robust than trying to recall each item individually without any
associated, structured context. Users are not particularly likely to use this method,
but you might when giving a talk, by placing the major points you want to make
one per room in a familiar house. Expert memory demonstrations often use either
this technique, or a similar one based on making up a story using the objects. One
notable subject increased their memory span to 80 digits over a course of 230 h of
practice by using athletics running times to group the digits (Ericsson et al. 1980 ).
Another popular mnemonic is to have a phrase to cue the retrieval of a set of
things. For example, ''Active Penguins Seek the Nearest Deep Pool'' is a mne-
monic for the seven layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model of