How People Focus Their Attention

To be able to focus on one thing and ignore the rest is called selective attention.  If you focus on completing a task, the ability to distract you using ads, pop ups or videos can be low. But if you are unsure of your task, the ability to distract you is greater. Although you are focusing on your task, in the background, your unconscious is working. It keeps track of things such as danger, food or even your name being called out. 

Filtering can be good or bad, depending on the situation.  Even if you provide information that does not mean people will pay attention to it.  Information that is clear to you might not be clear to others.  An option to breaking any filtering that may be happening, find a way to draw attention to what you want them to know.  If there is important information you want someone to know, make it "pop" ten more times than you normally would.

Repetion will eventually become automatic. If you choose to make a repletion simple, you might also have people make more errors. It might be wise to make fixing mistakes easy. Make multiple actions more efficient to the user. 

Users will build a sort of timer of how often an occurrence occurs, all in the subconscious.  To get the attention of users, use a strong signal and alert them to the occurrence you want them to focus on. 

Most users attention can last seven to ten minutes, depending on the material. If the material is too boring, you might lose the persons attention even faster. If you do online tutorials, try to keep it under seven minutes. 

Salient cues is when you pay attention to specific attributes when you are doing a task. Choose your salient cues to be obvious and specific to your audience.  People will only pay attention to salient cues.

You cannot multitask.  The better you think you are at multitasking, the worse you actually are at it.  Age is not a factor in multitasking. Try not to make people multitask, but if you must, pay attention to your form. Expect them to make errors. If they do make errors, have an easy way for them to fix it.

You have three brains based on Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click.    New brain: handles conscious, reasoning logical brain    Mid brain: handles emotions    Old brain: handles survival  To get attention use food, sex or danger when appropriate.  If you use images, you should try to use ones with up-close faces. If the above two does not work try using stories. 

You can use sounds to acknowledge peoples actions. You can use a loud sound for things that need a lot of attention. Be aware of how you use the sounds, you don't want people to get used to the sounds and begin to ignore it.

Signal sections theory I when you do not realize there is stimulus and you miss it. Then other times you think you've had a stimulus but you haven't.  When you are creating something, keep the signal detection theory in mind. 

The following questions will test your assessment of the course you just completed.

1. Please describe what selective attention is and how the use of ads, videos, etc., can effect it. 2. What should you do to help/stop people from filtering information? 3. What occurs when a person is on "automatic"? 4. Users will build a sort of timer of how often an occurrence occurs in their subconscious. Give three examples on how you would get their attention.  5. Provide the times someone's attention can be held for each activity. Boring material, Exciting material, online tutorials.  6. Please describe salient cues and provide an example. 7. True or False: You can multitask. The more you are juggling, the better at it you are. 8. What are the three brains based on Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click, and what are the functions for each.  9.  Give a positive and negative use of sound to get peoples attention. 10.  Please describe signal detection theory and provide three examples.