Interaction design is two things.
- managing attention
Once you come to the realization/acceptance that no one – not even the interested, motivated, and committed — has the kind of focused attention available for your thing that you assume they have, you will have a much better chance of capturing and sustaining any of it at all.
The more you assume of your audience’s attention, the less of it you’ll get. The more distracted you assume your audience is, the better you’ll be at focusing your message to them.
Ask as few actions of your audience as possible, and provide as little information to support those actions as possible. Everything else that you could put on your screen is a distraction.
It’s as simple (and ruthless) as that.
Then comes the persuasion.
There is the persuasion you probably think most about, which is macro-persuasion. This is using information and design to lead someone to a conclusion or action.
But the more important — and difficult — variety of persuasion that you should be thinking much more about is micro-persuasion. This is using information and design to capture and increase the focus of a person’s attention.
Remember: the average person is capable of reading 250 words per minute. But the average person chooses not to. In fact, the average person will engage in definitive heuristic processing — using visual cues to assess the relevance, quality, and trustworthiness of information — within 1-3 seconds of first looking at your screen or page. It’s in that very short time that they will ask and answer three simple questions:
- What is this?
- Is it relevant to me?
- What should I do next?
Because heuristic processing is an emotional and sensory experience, visual language will do the majority of the work of informing the answers to these three questions.
That means that every visual choice you make — layout, colors, typography, images — must be focused on getting a distracted, rushed, and emotionally-driven brain through their initial sub-conscious vetting and into the kind of systematic processing — detailed and focused review — you assume they’ll do initially.
If you’re interested in this subject, I wrote an article last spring about why good design requires persuasion. It goes into more detail on the four main elements of persuasion and the two kinds of processing — heuristic and systematic — that I mentioned today.
Ubunifu wa mwingiliano ni mambo mawili. Mara tu unapofika kwa utambuzi au kukubalika kwamba hakuna mtu - hata mwenye nia, mwenye nia, na aliyejitolea - ana aina ya umakini wa kuzingatia unaopatikana kwa kitu chako ambacho unafikiri wanacho, utakuwa na nafasi bora zaidi ya kukamata na kudumisha yoyote yake. Kadiri unavyofikiria umakini wa watazamaji wako, ndivyo utakavyopata umakini mdogo. Kadiri unavyofikiri wasikilizaji wako wamevurugika, ndivyo utakavyoweza kuwaelekeza ujumbe wako kwao. Uliza watazamaji wako wafanye mambo machache iwezekanavyo, na utoe habari kidogo iwezekanavyo ili kuunga mkono hatua hizo. Kila kitu kingine ambacho unaweza kuweka kwenye skrini yako ni usumbufu. Ni rahisi (na bila huruma) kama hiyo. Kisha kunakuja kushawishi. "Kama unavyojua, ""kuamini"" ni moja ya mambo ambayo huwezi kuamini, lakini kwa kweli ni ""macroliberal persuasion.""" Hii ni kutumia habari na kubuni kuongoza mtu kwa hitimisho au hatua. Lakini muhimu zaidi <unk> na ngumu <unk> aina ya ushawishi kwamba unapaswa kuwa kufikiri zaidi kuhusu ni micro-ushawishi. Hii ni kutumia habari na kubuni kukamata na kuongeza lengo la tahadhari ya mtu. Kwa mfano, mtu wa kawaida anaweza kusoma maneno 250 kwa dakika. Lakini mtu wa kawaida huchagua kutofanya hivyo. Kwa kweli, mtu wa kawaida atajihusisha na usindikaji wa heuristic wa mwisho - kutumia ishara za kuona kutathmini umuhimu, ubora, na uaminifu wa habari - ndani ya sekunde 1-3 ya kwanza kuangalia skrini yako au ukurasa. Ni katika muda huo mfupi sana kwamba wao kuuliza na kujibu maswali matatu rahisi: - Ni nini hii? - Je, jambo hilo linahusu mimi? - Ninapaswa kufanya nini sasa? Kwa sababu usindikaji wa heuristic ni uzoefu wa kihisia na hisia, lugha ya kuona itafanya kazi kubwa ya kutoa majibu ya maswali haya matatu. Hiyo inamaanisha kwamba kila chaguo la kuona unalofanya - mpangilio, rangi, typography, picha - lazima lizingatie kupata ubongo uliotengwa, uliokimbilia, na unaoendeshwa na hisia kupitia ukaguzi wao wa awali wa subconscious na katika aina ya usindikaji wa utaratibu - ukaguzi wa kina na wa kuzingatia - unafikiri watafanya mwanzoni. Kama wewe ni nia ya mada hii, Niliandika makala spring iliyopita kuhusu kwa nini kubuni nzuri inahitaji ushawishi. Inaenda kwa undani zaidi juu ya vipengele vinne kuu vya ushawishi na aina mbili za usindikaji <unk> heuristic na utaratibu <unk> kwamba mimi zilizotajwa leo.