How long can a user remember what they were working on? [migrated]

Posted by GlenPeterson on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by GlenPeterson
Published on 2012-09-06T20:35:53Z Indexed on 2012/09/06 21:50 UTC
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user-interface

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user-experience

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human-factors

A web application lets the user browse its screens for future or past months. The time period the user is currently viewing follows the user through every screen of the system. But users can be logged in for a month or more. After a certain period of inactivity, we will prompt the user:

You were viewing November 2008 when you last clicked. Want to view the current (default) time period instead?

How long between user clicks should we wait to show this message? I'm guessing somewhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours most people will forget what they were doing, but I'd love to have some data, or someone's experience to base it on.

Other suggestions related to this issue?

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