Literature
For a deeper insight into the subject I read a lot in the first step as well as watched some videos on the topic. Among others I have read the book „The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business“ by Thomas Davenport and the master thesis „The Physiologically Attentive User Interface“ by Daniel Chen. Additionally I watched some lectures of Maura Thomas. Maura is an expert in the field of Attention Management who has once again highlighted the significance of it.
In this first part of my research I developed a deeper understanding of Attention Management and learned which aspects are particularly important.
Interviews
In the next stage I have conducted eight interviews with friends, acquaintances and my family to roughly determine which aspects are most important and in order to create my personas. In the first place I have asked for some personal data. The most important were the job, the working environment, the working hours, the integration of devices at work and in private, the devices used and the software used, perceived distractions and the perceived frequency of distractions.
I also asked questions like „Can you describe how you spend a typical day or week?“, „Which activities do you spend the most time on?“, „What part of your job do you most enjoy? What do you least enjoy?“ or „Is anything making it difficult for you to accomplish your goals? If so, please describe them for me.“
This has shown me that it is not only important to help users direct their attention, but also to show them how inattentive they are by constant distractions from smartphones, other devices and their environment.
In addition to all this, I asked for the preferred kind of support of such an Attention Management System – rather restrictive or rather a friendly helper. A personal assistant, who offers help and works like a good secretary is clearly the winner. However, a restrictive behaviour of the system was also partly desired. I was particularly struck by the fact that all those whom I asked about the usefulness of such a system replied that they would very much welcome it.
During the interviews I noticed how thoughtful this topic makes the interviewees and how much they are unaware of their daily distractions. This has shown me that it is not only important to help users direct their attention, but also to show them how inattentive they are by constant distractions from smartphones, other devices and their environment.
