The effect of "attention" interface detail design on user's work coherence

Key words: Attention to short time memory coherence

In cognitive psychology, attention refers to the direction and concentration of the object or activity of consciousness. Directivity is the idea of pointing to an object or activity and leaving another object or activity. Concentration refers to the attention of the target to maintain a high degree of tension. Attention to the concentration of different levels, people consume in the activity of psychological resources is not the same. Chat between friends, do not need a lot of psychological efforts, attention to the concentration of low, the master chess, each other, the two sides concentrate, attention to the concentration of high.

Case: Baidu Mobile Input Method

Task: User x Input The following corpus, Chinese + English + Chinese.

Corpus: The Secret of happiness is elusive, but it can be very simple. The secret to Happiness, says a new university study published yesterday, is: remember the good times and forget the regrets. "Remember The good times and forget the regrets." The new study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, says people who look at the past with extreme optimism are happier than those who focus on past unpleasant experiences and regrets.

User action:

Step1. User x input Chinese in the Nine Sudoku Interface (Chinese state);

Step2. User X enters the full keyboard interface-the user is accustomed to the interface of the input corpus in English (English state);

Step3. User X enters the nine interface to continue entering Chinese (Chinese status)

The problem arises! Before entering Chinese again, the user forgets to switch to the Chinese state!

In this case, the input corpus is composed of "Chinese + English + Chinese". User X is accustomed to entering Chinese in the nine Sudoku interface, the full keyboard interface is entered in English. Therefore, in this case, the interface state is nine Sudoku-full keyboard-nine Sudoku. When the task went to Step3, the user X continued to enter Chinese but forgot to click the "/en" button and switch to Chinese status. Until you enter a string of English letters to realize that you have not switched the input state.

Why does it have such a problem?

1. The user is not focusing on the indicator provided by the interface at this point--the "/en" button

The entire input process, the user's large number of psychological resources are entered into the text of the task occupied, therefore, attention is also focused on the input text. In general, we take it for granted that users produce such errors because the interface lacks feedback mechanisms. The real reason, however, is not the lack of feedback, but the fact that the user is not focusing on the indicator-"/en" button-that the system provides. Only the current state of the "/en" button is the user's concern, or in a short time can be remembered by the user, so the "/en" button can be reliable work, otherwise it will cause user errors.

2. Users ' "Short-term memory" should not be neglected

When the human brain receives information, the information is first stored as an instantaneous memory of the memory system. If the information is reviewed, it will be further converted to a permanent memory, and if the information is not processed later, it will be forgotten by the brain. (as shown in the following figure)

Information stored in a short time memory can only be kept intact in a very short period of time. Once the information is stored in a short memory, the retreat process begins. (as shown in the following figure)

In this case, user X enters the English text at the full keyboard interface when STEP2. The user knows the current English state; When the English text input finished, the user further switch to the nine interface input Chinese, began to perform STEP3 operation, the two steps have been between the interval of 10 seconds (already not in the time of memory decay), the user has already forgotten the current interface is still in English state!

While such errors tend to be fleeting and easy to recover from, we cannot ignore them in the interface design. If you do not consider this level of detail in the interface design, it is as if in the process of playing a violin concerto, occasionally omitted in the music of a rise mark or drop mark. These minor mistakes make the audience unable to focus on the coherence of the music. Similarly, occasional surprises in the interface can also affect the consistency of the user's work.

Article Source: Baidu MUX Reprint please indicate the source link.