Attention economics in design
Economy deals with precious items that some people have, some people want and the process of moving those items from owner to the consumer.
The value of an object (how precious it is), can be caused by: * how much effort was made to create it (value by skill), * how useful to the consumer it is (value by ROI) or, * how rare it is (value by scarcity)
The modern times, specially when it comes to creating digital products, the most scarce resource has become the users’ attention/time.
Scarcity of attention
Attention can be better explained through vision. We have a narrow scope of focus (a 3° angle) and the other 177° are usually for backup. How does this works? Biology 101 for designers:
The 3° contain the area where people can identify better shapes and details, while the rest is where people can react better to movement and changes of color.
Try a new software, open your new game console straight from the box, try to read an in-depth article. None of these tasks allow you for multi-tasking. Right, you can run and listen to music, you can read and ignore music, but you can’t focus on two things at once, just like with vision.
Tip #1. Always think of attention as a resource. Now give that resource a number (up to 20, for instance). Now, take any interface you’ve designed, and start assigning numbers. How much attention a certain component, text, image, will need. How far that takes you? What components deserved some attention?
Pick your battles
When people are doing a task — trying to accomplish a goal — most of their attention is focused on the goals and data related to that task. 1
The battle for attention is a ruthless one with push notifications being the weapon of choice in most cases. We as designers have also poping windows, tooltip messages, animations, color and visual hierarchies to draw the attention of our users.
One common mistake I see in design are those interfaces calling for attention to themselves. Either because we like to explain the user that wonderful feature we thought about or because we are so proud of a beautiful component we just imagined, sometimes we want to tell the world: “Hey, I did this, love me!”.
Tip #2. Imagine attention your interface as an interference. Take all that attention resource we mentioned before. Allow a specific amount of it to understanding the task at hand. Now take the rest and consider that’s the only attention the user has for your interface. The more complex the task, the simpler the interface must be.
It’s all about “me” factor
You can increase the chances of a specific item succeeding in the battle for attention, if you add the “It’s all about me” factor.
Imagine your daily life. You need to buy a specific item and all of a sudden that items pops up everywhere: ads, people talking retailers. Anywhere you go, something reminds you of that item. If you take that to the extreme, you get retargeting, where that specific item follows you, instead of you bumping into it.
Now, in design we need to be subtle. Too much and we’re the needy ex- that claims for attention. Too little and we’re the indifferent person that calls you on their terms.
Tip #3. Be like water, as Bruce Lee said. Adapt to the environment. Jump-in when you see the user is more receptive. The user is trying to hassle with an inconvenient system? Offer a quicker alternative. The user repeats several times the same action? Offer a mass-editing feature. Give attention to where the user needs it and the user will give attention back.
- Johnson, Jeff (2010–04–14). Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Rules (Kindle Locations 1999–2000). Elsevier Science. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
