The principles of attention stress is a user interface design theory to measure the amount of attention that is required to perform certain tasks in a web application. It is developed by Antradar Software in an attempt to benchmark the ease of use of open source CMS products and to monitor the trend of UI designs.
The user interface (UI), in the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, whilst the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology.
The attention stress theory is based on many psychological observations, of which the two most important ones are:
attention shift
selection threshold
Attention shift addresses the issue of "getting lost", or the experience of a "broken flow". It is usually measured by the number of page refreshes or the amount of hand–eye coordination required to complete a task. According to attention shift, new pages cause more stress than pop-ups, and pop-ups are more "expensive" than things like inline-editing.
Selection threshold deals with the matter of "being overwhelmed". It is observed that when the users are presented more than 4 choices at a time, their decisions tend to base on random guess instead of reasoning. This is especially true with users who suffer minor dyslexic symptoms. A well-known solution to this problem is the "personal menu" in Microsoft Office products where rarely used menu items are hidden from the users.
Although the emergence of AJAX provides many ways to reduce attention shift, the paradox between attention shift and selection threshold still cannot be resolved. Because of the nature of some application logic, the overall attention stress bears a lower bound. This limit is termed "UI capacity" in the principles of attention stress.
Ajax is a set of web development techniques using many web technologies on the client side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML.
Attention management refers to models and tools for supporting the management of attention at the individual or at the collective level, and at the short-term or at a longer term.
Attentive user interfaces (AUI) are user interfaces that manage the user's attention. For instance, an AUI can manage notifications, deciding when to interrupt the user, the kind of warnings, and the level of detail of the messages presented to the user. Attentive user interfaces, by generating only the relevant information, can in particular be used to display information in a way that increase the effectiveness of the interaction.
In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the used amount of working memory resources. Cognitive load theory differentiates cognitive load into three types: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane.
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Related Research Articles
In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The cut command removes the selected data from its original position, while the copy command creates a duplicate; in both cases the selected data is kept in a temporary storage device called the clipboard. The data in the clipboard is later inserted in the position where the paste command is issued. The data is available to any application supporting the feature, thus allowing easy data transfer between applications.
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object such as a tool or device. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use.
ISO 9241 is a multi-part standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) covering ergonomics of human-computer interaction. It is managed by the ISO Technical Committee 159. It was originally titled Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs).
From 2006 on, the standards were retitled to the more generic Ergonomics of Human System Interaction.
A control element in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct manipulation to read or edit information about an application. User interface libraries such as Windows Presentation Foundation, GTK+, and Cocoa, contain a collection of controls and the logic to render these.
Common User Access (CUA) is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture. Used originally in the MVS/ESA, VM/CMS, OS/400, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems, parts of the CUA standard are now implemented in programs for other operating systems, including variants of Unix. It is also used by Java AWT and Swing.
Archy is a software system whose user interface poses a radically different approach for interacting with computers with respect to traditional graphical user interfaces. Designed by human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin, it embodies his ideas and established results about human-centered design described in his book The Humane Interface. These ideas include content persistence, modelessness, a nucleus with commands instead of applications, navigation using incremental text search, and a zooming user interface (ZUI). The system was being implemented at the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces under Raskin's leadership. Since his death in February 2005 the project was continued by his team, which later shifted focus to the Ubiquity extension for the Firefox browser.
User interface design (UI) or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.
Windows Aero is a design language introduced in the Windows Vista operating system. The changes made in the Aero interface affected many elements of the Windows interface, including the incorporation of a new look, along with changes in interface guidelines reflecting appearance, layout, and the phrasing and tone of instructions and other text in applications.
Tweak UI is a free application, released in 1996 by Microsoft for customizing the Microsoft Windows operating system's user interface. Tweak UI does not do anything that a knowledgeable user could not accomplish by editing the Windows Registry. However, Tweak UI provides a simple graphical user interface that most users find easier to use and less risky than editing the registry.
Mobile app development is the act or process by which a mobile app is developed for mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants, enterprise digital assistants or mobile phones. These applications can be pre-installed on phones during manufacturing platforms, or delivered as web applications using server-side or client-side processing to provide an "application-like" experience within a Web browser. Application software developers also must consider a long array of screen sizes, hardware specifications, and configurations because of intense competition in mobile software and changes within each of the platforms. Mobile app development has been steadily growing, in revenues and jobs created. A 2013 analyst report estimates there are 529,000 direct app economy jobs within the EU 28 members, 60% of which are mobile app developers.
A PIGUI package is a software library that a programmer uses to produce GUI code for multiple computer platforms. The package presents subroutines and/or objects which are independent of the GUIs that the programmer is targeting. For the purposes of this article, a PIGUI must support several GUIs under at least two different operating systems. The package does not necessarily provide any additional portability features. Native look and feel is a desirable feature, but is not essential for PIGUIs.
A mouse button is a microswitch on a computer mouse which can be pressed (“clicked”) to select or interact with an element of a graphical user interface.
A single-page application (SPA) is a web application or web site that interacts with the user by dynamically rewriting the current page rather than loading entire new pages from a server. This approach avoids interruption of the user experience between successive pages, making the application behave more like a desktop application. In a SPA, either all necessary code – HTML, JavaScript, and CSS – is retrieved with a single page load, or the appropriate resources are dynamically loaded and added to the page as necessary, usually in response to user actions. The page does not reload at any point in the process, nor does control transfer to another page, although the location hash or the HTML5 History API can be used to provide the perception and navigability of separate logical pages in the application. Interaction with the single page application often involves dynamic communication with the web server behind the scenes.
An interaction technique, user interface technique or input technique is a combination of hardware and software elements that provides a way for computer users to accomplish a single task. For example, one can go back to the previously visited page on a Web browser by either clicking a button, pressing a key, performing a mouse gesture or uttering a speech command. It is a widely used term in human-computer interaction. In particular, the term "new interaction technique" is frequently used to introduce a novel user interface design idea.
A user interface specification is a document that captures the details of the software user interface into a written document. The specification covers all possible actions that an end user may perform and all visual, auditory and other interaction elements.
Microsoft design language is a design language created by Microsoft. This design language is focused on typography and simplified icons, absence of clutter, increased content to chrome ratio, and basic geometric shapes. Early examples of MDL principles can be found in Encarta 95 and MSN 2.0. The design language evolved in Windows Media Center and Zune and was formally introduced as Metro during the unveiling of Windows Phone 7. It has since been incorporated into several of the company's other products, including the Xbox 360 system software, Xbox One, Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Outlook.com. Before the "Microsoft design language" title became official, Microsoft representative Qi Lu referred to it as the modern UI design language in his MIXX conference keynote speech. According to Microsoft, "Metro" has always been a codename and was never meant as a final product, but news websites attribute this change to trademark issues.
The HTC Evo Shift 4G is a smartphone developed by HTC Corporation and marketed as the concurrent/sequel to Sprint's flagship Android smartphone, running on its 4G WiMAX network. The smartphone launched on January 9, 2011.
Soft Ergonomics is the study of designing virtual interfaces that cater towards the wellness of the human body, its emotional and cognitive abilities.
