Principles of attention stress
Encyclopedia
The Principles of Attention Stress is a user interface
design theory to measure the amount of attention that is required to perform certain tasks in a web application. It is developed by Antradar Software in an attempt to benchmark the easy of use of open source CMS products and to monitor the trend of UI designs.
The Attention Stress theory is based on many psychological observations, of which the two most important ones are:
Attention Shift addresses the issue of "getting lost", or the experience of a "broken flow". It is usually measured by the number of page refreshes or the amount of hand–eye coordination required to complete a task. According to attention shift, new pages cause more stress than pop-ups, and pop-ups are more "expensive" than things like inline-editing.
Selection threshold deals with the matter of "being overwhelmed". It is observed that when the users are presented more than 4 choices at a time, their decisions tend to base on random guess instead of reasoning. This is especially true with users who suffer minor dyslexic symptoms. A well-known solution to this problem is the "personal menu" in Microsoft Office products where rarely used menu items are hidden from the users.
Although the emergence of AJAX
provides many ways to reduce Attention Shift, the paradox between Attention Shift and Selection Threshold still cannot be resolved. Because of the nature of some application logic, the overall Attention Stress bears a lower bound. This limit is termed "UI Capacity" in the Principles of Attention Stress.
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
design theory to measure the amount of attention that is required to perform certain tasks in a web application. It is developed by Antradar Software in an attempt to benchmark the easy of use of open source CMS products and to monitor the trend of UI designs.
The Attention Stress theory is based on many psychological observations, of which the two most important ones are:
- attention shift
- selection threshold
Attention Shift addresses the issue of "getting lost", or the experience of a "broken flow". It is usually measured by the number of page refreshes or the amount of hand–eye coordination required to complete a task. According to attention shift, new pages cause more stress than pop-ups, and pop-ups are more "expensive" than things like inline-editing.
Selection threshold deals with the matter of "being overwhelmed". It is observed that when the users are presented more than 4 choices at a time, their decisions tend to base on random guess instead of reasoning. This is especially true with users who suffer minor dyslexic symptoms. A well-known solution to this problem is the "personal menu" in Microsoft Office products where rarely used menu items are hidden from the users.
Although the emergence of AJAX
Ajax (programming)
Ajax is a group of interrelated web development methods used on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications...
provides many ways to reduce Attention Shift, the paradox between Attention Shift and Selection Threshold still cannot be resolved. Because of the nature of some application logic, the overall Attention Stress bears a lower bound. This limit is termed "UI Capacity" in the Principles of Attention Stress.
See also
- Attention managementAttention managementAttention management refers to models and tools for supporting the management of attention at the individual or at the collective level , and at the short-term or at a longer term ....
- Attentive user interfaceAttentive user interfaceThe Attentive User Interfaces are User Interfaces that manage the user attention. For instance an AUI can manage notification , deciding when to interrupt the user, the kind of warnings, and the level of detail of the messages presented to the user....