Design Equals Attention
First, let us understand what exactly is user's attention that we seek to get. Attention is the ability of our mind to selectively concentrate on a discrete aspect of information, whether it is a process or stimuli, whether subjective or objective, while ignoring other information flows. When we take user's attention in terms of UI, we mainly concentrate on the visual information. That said, there are two basic types of visual attention. The first is object based attention where the user directs their attention to a certain location in the interface. The second is feature based attention where the user directs attention to a certain feature of the object such as shape or color. There are four types of attention which we will go through in this article.
Selective attention is the foremost type that makes a choice which stimuli is the most important in a particular situation. Selective attention is the most versatile and useful psychological tool for designers to grab user's attention with while creating software environment. The most common example of divided attention is watching any movie or Youtube video and talking over the phone. Divided attention allows us to respond to multiple demands of the surrounding simultaneously. Within the interfaces, it can be observed as in games where user has to take control over multiple, sometimes not closely connected elements or in interfaces that are somehow split into separate regions. Alternating attention is the ability to switch our focus back and forth between tasks that require different cognitive demands. Like when we check your route via Google maps app, and make changes to your driving direction. The most important type of attention UX designer should focus on when creating interface in dynamics and building the flow is sustained attention which allows user to focus on a particular stimuli for an extended period of time. Basically, this type of attention is the key of understanding the bounce-rate of any interface, the means of keeping user involved within the interface as long as possible. It forces designers to insert a certain goal the UI/UX interface to serve.
One of the most common and basic practice of grabbing user's attention is based on the works of German psychiatrist Hedwig von Restorff (1906-1962). His 1933 study revealed a pretty obvious, yet game changing observation. From a certain number of displayed elements person will most likely remember the ones different from the rest. Also called isolated effect this leads to the first and the foremost psychology principle we can operate with when creating interface that should grab user’s attention.
Fonts, buttons, or pictures, anything we can highlight, emphasize or alternate from the rest of interface can become eye catching. Something user gets hooked upon and remembers. This becomes the first step when we grab user’s attention, whether we speak of an app, or desktop. Isolation effect also serves as a manipulation to guide user into the interface. Von Restorff Effect is the reason why call to action buttons are differentiated from the rest of the interface elements.
The serial position effect was studied by German psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus. It is the psychological tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle. This effect is a form of cognitive bias based upon two other effects: primacy and recency. The primacy effect determines our brain's inclination to remember information perceived in the beginning of any interaction much better than anything that follows. This effect can be reduced when the amount of information is increased or presented quickly. The opposite one is recency effect. It is believed to be caused by more recent information blocks to be stored in short-term memory, which generally lasts for 30 seconds. It can be reduced with a distractive task between the information load.
To influence buyer’s decision, e-commerce websites position the most important to sell items on their pages in the beginning and the end of lists, manipulating buyer’s attention. This effect is the key to SEO for obvious reasons. Most of the apps favor bottom or top bar navigation instead of hamburger menu. Following a simple rule of serial position effect, designers put the most important user actions in the navigation bars to the right or left. The logical flow of user's attention from left side to the right side determines which buttons or features should be placed first and last to manipulate user and provide his the most effective UX design.