Selective Attention

The process of focusing our attention only to a subset of the stimuli in the environment — usually those related to our goals.

People filter out information that isn’t relevant

To maintain focus on the task at hand we must guide users’ attention. Prevent them from being overwhelmed or distracted by helping them find the information or action they need at the right moment.

Banner blindness

Website visitors ignore banner content that resembles ads, or appears in locations traditionally dedicated to ads. By not styling or placing content to look like ads, you have a higher chance of attention being paid to it.

Change blindness

A perceptual phenomenon occurs when significant changes in an interface go unnoticed due to limitations of our attention and the lack of strong cues. Avoid this by analyzing your design for any competing changes that may happen at the same time and that may divert attention from each other.

cognitive-psychologyperception

Origin

An early theory of attention was Donald Broadbent’s filter model. Built on the research by Cherry Collins, Broadbent used an information-processing metaphor to describe human attention. He suggested that our capacity to process information is limited, and our selection of information to process takes place early on in the perceptual process.