I recently watched a video entitled 'Selective Attention Test' by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. The video is just over a minute in length. The video starts by showing a group of people with two basketballs. The viewers goal is to count the amount of times a pass is made by the group of people. So, I watched the video. Counted. 15 is the answer according to the video (I counted 17..). But then text comes up on the screen and asks, "Did you see the gorilla?". I did see the gorrilla in the video and I was asking myself "why is there a gorilla?". Probably explains why my count was 17 and not 15.
So to answer the question "how selective was my attention", I would like to think that my attention to detail is pretty okay. I noticed the gorilla and almost got the count right. But prehaps if the experiment was more complex, the outcome would have been different.
How is this relevent to Human Computer Interactions? Our goal as developers is to make programs, webpages, applications etc that the allow the user to navigator or opperate easily and efficiently. Creating a webpage that is so full of detail or is 'busy' may have a negative affect on your target user audience as the users are unable to decipher how to use your webpage. As deveoplers we must cater for this when designing for users.
Souces:
http://sharpbrains.com/blog/2006/09/28/attention-and-working-memory/
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