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The Tech Industry Has Contributed To an 'Attention Crisis', Google Researchers Say (washingtonpost.com)
A new paper written by Google's user experience researchers delves into the reasons that we can't put down our phones, and starts to explore what companies can do about it. It also calls on the technology industry to reexamine the way it ties engagement to success -- noting that capturing people's attention is not necessarily the best way to measure whether they're satisfied with a product. From a report: For its study, Google focused on a small group of smartphone users and kept tabs on how they used their smartphone throughout a normal day. It also dug into 112 interviews from previous research to evaluate how people felt about their phone use. Researchers Julie Aranda and Safia Baig of Google presented the paper at mobile conference Tuesday in Barcelona. Google used the results of this study to help design its "Digital Wellbeing" tools, which are a part of the company's newest Android operating system and designed to help people curb their smartphone use. The paper provides an overall picture of the reasons people feel they have to be in constant contact with their phones -- though it stops short of evaluating the best ways to combat that.
It does, however, take aim at the basic way that Internet companies -- including Google -- have elevated engagement as the best metric to measure success, creating an economy where attention becomes the most important currency. "We feel that the technology industry's focus on engagement metrics is core to this attention crisis that users are facing," the paper says. "... It's important to consider alternative metrics to indicate success, relating to user satisfaction and quality of time spent."
It does, however, take aim at the basic way that Internet companies -- including Google -- have elevated engagement as the best metric to measure success, creating an economy where attention becomes the most important currency. "We feel that the technology industry's focus on engagement metrics is core to this attention crisis that users are facing," the paper says. "... It's important to consider alternative metrics to indicate success, relating to user satisfaction and quality of time spent."
That marketeers have four seconds to catch somone's attention before they move on to — Squirrel!
See subj.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"... It's important to consider alternative metrics to indicate success, relating to user satisfaction and quality of time spent."
When at work, I observe some of my colleagues. I have one conclusion:
One will easily conclude that these folks are mentally ill just by the way they interact with their devices...mostly FB.
The weak minded will always attach themselves to things, be it their phones or anything else. :(
They are simply to easy to manipulate and thus get addicted to mostly anything.
To fix this we must raise the critical thinking skills of the entire world. Not that tptb will ever willingly do that though
And television. Naysayers think that everyone but themselves is responsible.
We evolved as hunter-gatherers, and it would be rather fatal for us to stay fixated on one thing at a time.
I think a major part of the issue is that the amount of notifications people get daily are very high. App developers generate notifications based on what's best for the developer, rather than the end user. No mobile game has ever needed notifications (I *might* make an exception for asynchronous turn-based games), but all of them push you to let their game send notifications. The F2P games do the whole "new daily special" sort of thing where logging in needs to be habitual in order to get in-game bonuses. CNN pushes notifications basically every time Donald Trump tweets...also, Twitter has incessant notifications. Instagram and Snapchat remind users of expiring stories, a purely artificial need for them. And through all of this noise, there are the texts and e-mails and Whatsapp messages for which a notification is legitimately warranted.
The notifications drawer is the new inbox, and like e-mail before it, it's in need of a spam filter.
The trouble with the creation of a spam filter is a matter of who writes the rules for it. If end users are responsible for their spam filters, then app devs will simply constantly nag or bump their incentives to be whitelisted, and nothing changes. If Apple and Google do it, they are then going to find themselves on very shaky ground if the Fox News app gets to display three notifications but MSNBC only gets two. If a third party like Barracuda or Scrollout makes a utility for notification filtering, not only do they end up with the same problem (albeit with a bit more leeway than Apple or Google would since it wouldn't be default/integrated behavior), Apple/Google would have to make some sort of a special API for them that wouldn't be available to regular devs in order to avoid those devs using the same APIs to make an end run around the filters, which now starts causing other issues about what sort of lower-level APIs should be available and who gets to be a notification filter, and so forth.
So yes, let's solve this problem. However, assigning responsibility to somebody is the first step.
I have literally found myself in this situation: TV on, Netflix streaming, Big Brother livestream running, game (Warcraft) idling running, and surfing on a web site.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When I worked at Google, a lot of people took it as a badge of pride how much email and chat and crap like that that they "managed". A lot of feature proposals for things like gmail are geared towards somehow helping you manage the flood. Basically, the first assumption is that email is good and more is better, and that assumption is probably right at first, but certainly wrong once you can't keep up. Just like it's good for you to directly interact with tens of people in a day, but directly interacting with thousands of people in a day destroys you.
You know what I'd really like to see? I'd like to see a way for my computing systems to realize that a mailing list I'm on is useless, that I never engage with it, or that I engage with it in only negative ways - and then suggest that I unsubscribe from it, or skip it past my inbox to a folder for later. I'd like to be able to tell gmail to hold new content for an hour, so that I can triage what I have without having to deal with new items popping in and distracting me. [You can kinda-sorta fake that by processing using labels.] I'd like to be able to tag a few apps as being useful for a particular project, then as the computer notices I'm using something else, it can ask "Is this helping or hindering your project?", and then I could ask to put that app in a timeout if needed.
Basically, it would be nice if instead of providing tools to magnify my ability to focus on more things, the computer could provide tools to excise irrelevant things from my focus, allowing me to more effectively use what I have.
You need to be at least to manage partial concentration on something for periods of time, else the fish gets away. You don't want to concentrate so much the bear which also wants fish eats you instead. But then that's why you have fishing buddies - one to look out for the bears. Or that is what you tell your wife when loading the beer into the fishing tackle bag along with the rod and bait.
Drum machines make you a slave to the rhythm.
Personally, I'm perfectly capable of figuring out that I'm looking at a useless mailing list. What I want is for my computing systems to stop giving me impertinent suggestions as to how to spend my life....
And no, I do not feel ANY obligation to read an email, just because it appeared in my inbox....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What phones did you buy that only last 2 years?
I had my iPhone 3GS till I got my iPhone 6s+....that was a long time and it worked great.
I don't plan to ditch my 6s+ for quite awhile, nothing so compelling that I feel the need to upgrade...and I'll get a free battery replacement here in a month or so....
Ok, I'll go with you on this one...and I guess its because I'm a bit older, but I've never had a social media account. No FB, no twitter, etc. I never joined due to privacy issues, and frankly, if you work any jobs with security requirements, I think it helps NOT to have connections to people you may not really know.
But aside from the fact that I have a large swath of friends, long term ones....I'm constantly in touch with them via text, email, voice...and *GASP* getting together with them in real meat space!!!
I use my phone for listening to music in the car, actual texts/calls....and really that's about it.
Im kinda baffled at people purported to have their noses stuck in a phone 24/7....I guess that explains a sad date I observed not long back, a young couple, and rather than talk, interact and get to know each other, they had their noses stuck in their phones.
I thought that was a bit sad.
Are there that many people out there that are so hooked on their phones that it occupies that much of their daily lives?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Don't get me wrong, they are a useful and powerful tool. But for most people it is more of an addiction and distraction that they simply can not stop. Like a cigarette using a certain brand appears hip. Like a cigarette it's addiction can lead to problems, and like a cigarette user these addicts can be seen as annoying in public, in movie theaters, etc. Sometimes dangerously so (use while driving). Also like a cigarette the manufacturers know of and encourage addictive tendencies.
So I went back to using a dumbphone. It will last much longer than two years, it costs a tenth as much as a smart phone, and it does not pull me in to some sort of Attention Crisis.
It's great that that works for you, but for many people, me included, not having a smartphone means having to carry a whole bunch of other devices as well. A PDA for calendaring and contact management, a GPS receiver for navigation, a camera, an ebook reader, an MP3 player, a portable game console, a fitness tracker, etc. I used to actually carry all of the above (not all the time; I had to pick and choose what to take when and often didn't have the device I wanted), and besides the proliferation of things to carry, most of them didn't do their job as well as my smartphone does. Calendaring and contact management is much better when the data is synced to the cloud. GPS navigation is much better with live traffic and regular (free!) map updates. And so on.
People don't buy smartphones because they think they are better phones. People buy smartphones because they do a whole bunch of things that dumbphones don't.
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Have you looked into Google Inbox? It some of the distraction-reduction things you ask for. Bundle related emails together and then have the bundle appear only once per day or once per week. Snooze emails that you can't address right now to a later date.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Are there that many people out there that are so hooked on their phones that it occupies that much of their daily lives?
Are you kidding me? It's ridiculous.
Took my kid to his gymnastics class (YMCA), and while sitting in the waiting/observation room, with huge glass windows, out of perhaps 40+ parents there was only one other parent actually paying attention to their child. I went over and sat down next to her and had a very nice conversation. Every other parent in the room had their face buried in a goddamn smartphone and was totally ignoring their child.
I'm a bit of a paradoxical Luddite. I own an ISP, but refuse to purchase a smart phone. I have a table for when I must use the internet for some important purpose.. But other than that, I carry a normal flip phone (that I had to special order, because the idiots at the wireless store looked at me like I was insane when I said I didn't want a smart phone).
I don't blame the smart phones themselves. I do acknowledge that they can be super important and beneficial for some people. But for most folks they are a distraction and, I think, impart a seriously negative impact on their lives.
I have family members (who shall remain nameless) who can't drive down the fucking road without checking their phones.
It's great that that works for you, but for many people, me included, not having a smartphone means having to carry a whole bunch of other devices as well. A PDA for calendaring and contact management, a GPS receiver for navigation, a camera, an ebook reader, an MP3 player, a portable game console, a fitness tracker, etc.
Oh bullshit... I have a tablet that has every single function you just named. ONE DEVICE. But, I don't carry it in my pocket. It's not a constant distraction. Normally it's sitting on the passenger seat and, if I need it, I can retrieve it quickly. I carry a flip phone for phone calls.
I'm not saying that works for you.. I'm simply saying that every function you just described can be accommodated without a smart phone and without multiple devices.
It's great that that works for you, but for many people, me included, not having a smartphone means having to carry a whole bunch of other devices as well. A PDA for calendaring and contact management, a GPS receiver for navigation, a camera, an ebook reader, an MP3 player, a portable game console, a fitness tracker, etc.
Oh bullshit... I have a tablet that has every single function you just named. ONE DEVICE. But, I don't carry it in my pocket. It's not a constant distraction. Normally it's sitting on the passenger seat and, if I need it, I can retrieve it quickly. I carry a flip phone for phone calls.
I'm not saying that works for you.. I'm simply saying that every function you just described can be accommodated without a smart phone and without multiple devices.
So you carry a phone and a tablet. How is that not "multiple devices"?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
How do you think people hunt? Have you ever hunted? Ever watch a cat hunt? You don't think there is fixation going on there? Jesus... I can watch my cat not move a muscle for 20 mins while he's perched outside a gopher hole, just waiting for that dumb bastard to pop his head up.
Believe me, there is all sorts of single focus fixation going on there.
Prey has to be wary. Hunters do not.
Technology was the very first arrowhead. Do you mean modern technology?
You have some pretty serious issues, dude...
Okay. I wasn't clear.. I'll give you that..
You listed a half dozen devices as if they all needed to be separate devices.. I was saying that the LIST could be accommodated by one device. So... okay.. 2 devices.. But not 8.
Sure. But if you take one more step you get to one device. One small enough to fit in a pocket. And all of your non-phone functionality has a data connection even when Wifi is unavailable -- unlike your tablet, unless the tablet has a cellular modem and you pay for service for it.
Of course, I'm not trying to tell you that your solution is bad. If it works for you, great. But the AC above was trying to say that people are stupid for wanting a smartphone when a dumbphone is all you need. My point was that a dumbphone is not all many of us need. Which you agree with, because you augment your dumbphone with another device that fills all of those other niches.
Whether you let your smartphone take over your life, making you check your Facebook feed every two minutes, is a separate issue.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.