2.9 Respect the Visitor's Attention

2.9 Respect the Visitor’s Attention

Time is precious, wasting a visitor’s will cause frustration and lead to abandonment or resentment. Additionally, the more time a visitor spends in front of a screen, the more energy they utilize. As such, throwing stuff in front of the visitor vying for their attention might sound like good business (even though we know due to banner blindness it rarely works), but it mostly damages the environment and dissuades the visitor.

Criteria

Respecting Attention: The visitor can easily control how (and when) they receive information to both improve attention and respect with the visitor.
Avoid Distraction: Features that don’t distract people or unnecessarily lengthen the time they spend using the product or service have a higher priority than others.
Avoid Attention-keeping: Avoid using infinite scroll or related attention-keeping tactics.

Impact

Medium

Effort

Low

Benefits

Environmental:
Using pagination rather than infinite scrolling allows individuals to request data on demand rather than encouraging overconsumption, thereby reducing their carbon impact by way of using psychology to encourage healthy (and sustainable) browsing habits.
Transparency:
Being open and honest with visitors about their experience and avoiding moving their attention in negative ways will lead to greater trust and the potential for repeat custom.
Social Equity:
By avoiding dark and deceptive patterns and ensuring that the visitor’s attention is focused on achieving their aims, you reduce the potential for confusion, mistakes, and lapses in judgment which could lead to consequences for them and the trust they have in your business down the road.
Accessibility:
Being aware of accessibility barriers and accounting for them within your processes will allow you to reduce barriers to access and prioritize the availability of information for visitors who may access information using different tooling (such as assistive technology like a screen reader). In doing so you can reduce the additional emissions produced by accessibility tools as visitors can find what they want quicker, and fewer mistakes are likely to be made during a session.
Performance:
Certain attention-seeking features like notification requests or cookie banners can detract from visitor performance, as time is spent by consumers navigating through methods to close or hide the annoyances. Finding better ways of presenting the information will make an experience feel faster and reduce the barriers to access which trigger a block in the user-flow.
Economic:
Organizations that monetize visitor attention strive to keep it as long as possible, therefore increasing their product or service’s environmental impact. Conversely, organizations that strive to streamline interactions while still meeting visitor’s needs (and their own business goals) measurably reduce their product or service’s environmental impact, and potentially reach new audiences.

GRI

materials: Medium
energy: Medium
water: Medium
emissions: Medium

Example

Community guidelines can help foster a safe, conflict-free environment. Here is also an example of an attention manipulation tactic to be avoided.

Resources

View the Guideline