The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve is a mathematical formula describing the exponential rate of the decay of information from the human brain when there is no attempt to retain it. Developed by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the curve identifies a brutal retention gap, demonstrating that the sharpest decline in memory occurs within the first 20 minutes to 24 hours after initial exposure. Without active reinforcement, humans typically lose approximately 70% of new material within a single day; the information doesn’t just fade—it evaporates.
In the world of manufacturing and specification, this curve is the silent assassin of your marketing budget. You may have presented a technically brilliant, hour-long CPD to a room of prestigious architects, but by the time they reach their desks the following morning, your “revolutionary” rainscreen system has likely been lost to the decay of information, reduced to a vague, grey blur in their mental archives.
Humans, being predictably human, operate on a “use it or lose it” cognitive economy. If you provide data without a structural mechanism to bridge the retention gap, you aren’t educating—you are simply participating in a very expensive form of performance art.
Practical Application & Case Study
The Problem: A structural glazing manufacturer delivers a high-density technical seminar. The slides are packed with U-values and wind-load calculations. The audience is impressed but, three weeks later, when a project reaches the specification stage, the architects cannot recall the specific benefits of the manufacturer’s coating over a cheaper competitor. They have succumbed to the retention gap.
- The FRAKT Intervention: We re-engineer the narrative using Spaced Repetition to halt the decay of information.
- Phase 1: Deliver the CPD with high “Narrative Contrast” (making the key facts “sticky”).
- Phase 2: Send a “Cheat Sheet” 24 hours later—not a brochure, but a one-page “Decision Matrix” for architects.
- Phase 3: Provide a project-specific “Specification Trigger” email 7 days later.
- The Result: By interrupting the curve at strategic intervals, the manufacturer moves the information from short-term “noise” into a long-term, specify-able asset.
“Architects don’t forget your technical data because they are careless; they forget it because their brains are efficiently clearing out anything that doesn’t look like a survival tool. If your content lacks a retrieval hook, you’re just contributing to the entropy.”
