Principle of limited attention
It's impossible for us to pay attention to everything in our environment. We have hundreds of TV channels, thousands of movies and shows on streaming sites, and 300 hours of new video uploaded to YouTube every minute. We see about one million marketing messages each year, and spend, on average, 13 hours each week on email. Theres isn't enough time in the day for it all. Computer Science professor at the University of Maine, George Markowsky, makes the case that our brains receive about 11 million bits of data per second, but we're only able to process roughly 50 bits per second. There's a huge difference between the amount of information being transmitted and the amount of information our brains have the capacity to process. And the number of websites, apps, articles, and advertisements trying to get our attention are accelerating. Which means that whether we're launching a new product, growing an existing business, or trying to spread a message on the web, it’s harder than ever to get noticed in a noisy world.
Most of our lives are like a noisy, crowded airport scene. We have way too many things vying for our attention, and only a limited amount of time and energy. As a result, almost everything becomes background noise. And in our current economy, attention is becoming increasingly rare and valuable. So if we’re tuning almost everything out, what do we pay attention to? Psychology researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons have been studying human attention for over a decade. And they've found that what we pay attention to is primarily based on what we want to accomplish. In their experiment, they asked participants to jog behind an assistant and count the number of times he touched his hat. As they jogged, they ran past a staged fight in which two men appeared to be beating a third. Even in broad daylight, over 40 percent missed the fight. At night, 65 percent missed it.
Half the participants in these experiments seem to be oblivious to things that are happening right in front of their eyes. But how does this work in digital environments? When we focus on one thing, we ignore other things around us. And this happens a lot on the web because we're very task-focused. Based on our past experience, we've learned that the right side of web pages typically include ads, and so we ignore them. As we try to accomplish our task we assess the right side of the page unconsciously in our peripheral vision, and if our brain suspects it's an ad, we filter it out and likely won't look or pay attention. Daniel Simons explains that even though it's in their visual range, people typically don't consciously perceive aspects of their world that fall outside of the focus of their attention. These events can be dramatic enough that the vast majority of people are convinced that they would notice. In reality, though, many people do not.
We have to know what our user's desired outcome is. What's the thing they ultimately want to do? The end result they're looking for? If we run an e-commerce shoe store, our users ultimately just wants a pair of shoes that fit. If we have a job board, our users ultimately just wants to get hired. It's our job to understand what our customer ultimately wants to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it.
Only provide our users with what they really need to accomplish their desired outcome. The question is: what do they need? Our opinion, or the opinion of the highest paid person in the room, isn't enough to make a solid decision. As much as we like to think we know what our customers really need, we still need data to inform our decisions and test our assumptions. Use data from multiple sources to get a more accurate insights. By providing users with only the key information they need to accomplish the task they're currently focused on, we eliminate distractions and increase the likelihood they'll successfully accomplish their goal.
Most of the time, visitors glance at the page, scan some of the text, and click the first link that catches their attention or seems to resemble what they’re looking for. So, if people are just going to scan the page, design for scanning instead of reading. Put the most important content or elements where people are most likely to see it. Make it obvious what they’re is supposed to do on each page. Make decisions about which elements are the highest priority. And create a visual hierarchy that guides people to them first. Get rid of anything that’s not making a real contribution. Format text to support scanning: use plenty of headings, keep paragraphs short, and use bulleted lists. People can only read so much text on a page without losing interest. So only give them the information they need in the moment, and let them choose whether they want more details.
People don't have enough time in the day to pay attention to everything vying for their attention. As a result, we filter out almost everything so we can focus on what we want to accomplish. And when we're focused on that one thing, we ignore other things around us—even things that are right in front of our eyes. So when it comes to designing our app or website, we need to remove clutter and make it as easy as possible for our customers to achieve their desired outcome. Rather than trying to fight the unintentional blindness that comes with our users' focused attention, help direct it to where it already wants to go.