Now we complete this attention and cognition arc. Part 1 started this arc by describing how I was allowing myself to get distracted. Part 2 dealt with Lapses of Consciousness. Part 3 went into detail about these lapses and introduced the concept of invalid task-switching as a way the non-conscious mind works to get our attention and Part 4 covered discussed some of the non-conscious' methods.
Here we get to metrics available to measure attention and cognition (with a nod to Brad's glove throwing). This whole arc is based on comments from two readers, Brad Berens and "Frequent Reader".
Fortunately this research has historical roots going back to at least the 1880s. No, not how and where people focus their attention on the web, just how and where people focus their attention and far more importantly, why.
A metric that comes out of all this is "what kind of people will regularly visit a information-poor, complex site?" A similar one is "Will you get more visitors if your site becomes a information-poor, complex site?" (You can read about information-rich and information-poor sites at Usability Studies 101: MIPs are Next, Usability Studies 101: Making Cookies and Focusing Your Customer's Attention).
Right now it looks like this is one of those truly fascinating areas of research that creates maps, some areas of which are labeled with "Hyre thyre be Dragones". Lots of the stuff NextStage comes up with goes against "best practices" and simply because "best practices" for the web were created billions of years ago in web time, when browser windows were small by today's standards, pages were mainly text and the like.
Get ready. Another shift in how people will use the web is on the horizon.
And the more things change, the more they'll stay the same.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
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