7. Recognition vs Recall

Another well known feature of human cognition is that recognition is much faster than recall if you need to retrieve something from long term memory.

Recognition

You smell something or hear a song and a distant memory instantly gets triggered. You think about it for a moment and all of the emotions and feelings come flooding back.  The links you have made within your long term memory (LTM) helps you recognise the memories.

This is the easiest way of retrieving memories.

Recall

Where were you at 5.25 pm 3 weeks ago?

It is probably hard to come up with an instant answer.

You can work your way back through the memories you have, making links as you go and eventually, you may recall where you were. 

Trying to retrieve information from LTM without a specific stimuli is a much harder process.

So include easily recognisable elements in an interface.