UX Design: Drowning in Information
With the Limited Attention We have
Disclaimer: This article is mainly taken from The Smarter Screen book, written by Shlomo Benartzi with Jonah Lehrer.
“This surplus of digital information creates blind spots on the screen.”
Digital revolution and internet has changed the way we live. Now, we have more information and also choices in it. But, it also creates a profound challenge, you may call it a problem, someone has to process it.
“We have more choices, but we choose the wrong thing.
We have more information, but we somehow miss the most relevant details.
We act quickly, but that often means we act without thinking.”
The main problem is, we have limited attention.
Business, to be successful now can’t escape digital trend. Even more so, most of our actions, our decision, are now made on our gadgets. We are living in a world of zeros and ones, where we put our lives on the screens of our gadgets. And it’s incredibly important to design the display right.
More Water ≠ More Drinking
Try to search anything in Goo*gle right now. A simple search would give you millions of results, thousands of pages. Even if we browse only the first few pages, we would still have to struggle with the problem of making selection.
Because there’s no clear answer, we end up perusing the websites, comparing pictures, searching for relevant details.
Imagine you have a sink or a faucet, that enables you to get fresh water for you to drink. The water flows so slowly, but enough for you. You are able to drink without a rush. Now imagine that sink getting replaced by a fire hose, like those you would see in a fire truck. The fire hose makes the water flow so fast that it gives you more water then ever.
This overflowing water doesn’t translate into increased drinking capacity. We have fixed constraint, out mouth could only open so wide. It doesn’t matter how much water is there, we will never be able to gulp more than a few at a times.
Our mind work the same way. Replace water with information and mouth with our our mind. The amount of information that we see on the screen will almost always exceed the capacity of our mind to take it in.
We are limited by the scarcity of attention, by our inability to focus on more than a few things at the same time.
Information consumes the attention of its recipient. A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, forcing us to make difficult choices about what to perceive and think about.
The Magical Number
George Miller’s research (AKA Miller’s law) told us that people can remember 7 ± 2 pieces of information. In other words, we can remember 5–9 information at any given time.
Let’s try that out shall we? I want you to read these sentences carefully, and try to remember the last word from each sentence. Sentences are created using random sentence generator.
- My Mum tries to be cool.
- The book is in front of the table.
- Lets all be unique together until we realise we are all the same.
- I’ll stay away from something I don’t like.
- She wrote him a long letter.
- He told us a very exciting adventure story.
- Someone I know recently combined Maple Syrup & buttered Popcorn thinking it would taste like caramel popcorn.
Now, could you please list the last word from each sentence, in order?
Was it easy? If so, then great, you have a great memory!!
If not, then welcome brother, or sister our big family, where most people belong to :)
The Shrinking Magical Number
I bet that most of you can’t remember that. Psychologists came up with new ways of measuring the amount of information we can attend to, it’s called the working memory. BTW, it’s also debatable, whether there are differences when people from reading from actual paper and on the screen. There will be a chapter about this in the near future.
Miller’s magical number was way too optimistic. Nelson Cowan, came up with another research and came up with another magical number, a shrinking magical number. This time, the number was 4 ± 1.
It doesn’t matter how much data you throw up onto the screen — we can notice only about four bits of it (letters, words, numbers, colors, whatever). The rest is noise. Wasted pixels.
Poor, the All-consuming Condition
I’m talking about poor, in economic terms, literally. Would it shock you if I tell you that being poor means coping not just with a shortfall of money. But also with a concurrent shortfall of cognitive resources. Scientists estimate that the cognitive impact of poverty is roughly equivalent to losing a full night of sleep or suffering a 13-points drop in IQ scores.
It’s long been known, that low-income people are far less likely to have savings in retirement. While some might speculate that this lack of savings is due to a lack of income — the poor can’t spare a dime-it turns out that, if low-income people are automatically enrolled in a savings plan, then the vast majority end up saving for retirement, even though they are free to opt out. This suggests that the issue is not just about money, but also the mental bandwidth to plan for the future.
Scarcity of attention — it actually makes it harder to deploy whatever attention we have left. As a result, we suffer from inattention blindness, which occurs whenever the amount of information streaming into the brain exceeds our ability to process it.
A screen filled with an excessive amount of information will actually decrease our ability to process it. The end result was bad decision making. Even tasks that don’t seem so onerous — such as filling out a form — can actually leave us utterly depleted.
The UX Design Tips & Tricks
1. Leave Information Out
We should also be more willing to leave information out. Consumers are so overwhelmed with alternatives, they have to be guided through the decision-making process.
Focus on the mental, not the physical screen. What is being displayed on screen should be adjusted to what users need essentially. For example, GPS screens in cars should only display our driving speed. When we are in a highway it should only inform us about appropriate exit. When we are stopped at a red light, the screen can be fully functional.
2. Use Information Compression Technique
Human mind has a clever trick for expanding its attentional bandwidth. Although we could pay attention to only a few bits of information at any given moment, we are also capable of chunking those bits together. And we can actually facilitate this better by compressing the information that we are going to display.
By exposing the mind to effective shortcuts — by showing us how to compress the information — it’s possible to accelerate the act of chunking, and thus make us less vulnerable to the limits of attention. For example, giving visuals to tell a story or dividing a large choice set into useful categories.
3. Incorporate Attention Filters
Instead of telling users everything, try to pick the one variable users care most about — location, price, etc. — and then use that filter to make a choice. Sometimes, this is as simple as relying on visuals such as emphasising easy categories and big “Buy” buttons.
Well, I think that’s it for this chapter. See ya around!
