Attention is one of the most valuable resources of the digital age. For most of human history, access to information was limited. Centuries ago many people could not read and education was a luxury. Today we have access to information on a massive scale. Facts, literature, and art are available (often for free) to anyone with an internet connection.
We are presented with a wealth of information, but we have the same amount of mental processing power as we have always had. The number of minutes has also stayed exactly the same in every day. Today attention, not information, is the limiting factor.
Many users will attempt to move diagonally from Find to an item in the child menu, but, because in doing so their mouse will cross the area for Spelling and Grammar, the target submenu will be lost and instead the Spelling and Grammar one will be opened. (Note that older versions of MacOS
Ever presence of tools is another theme this year. For example, a toolbar with custom favorites and tools appeared on every page of the 3M intranet. Similarly, every page on the Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization’s intranet offered a waffle menu that led to essential
Even if you don’t have a lively and engaged community on your ecommerce site, you may be able to create a link between existing communities and your business. Leverage existing social channels and such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest and encourage website visitors to explore key
Can Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies Alone Save $2 Trillion in Preventing Cybercrime?
It’s through smart contracts that transactions can be made whilst their details can be kept both transparent and secure. Writing about their new smart contracts-based Ethereum trading platform, Confideal stated: “To put it simply, code is not law, but smart contracts created on a platform
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
Blockchain in Retail: Changing the Shopping Experience
What has happened is that so much data is now available from so many locations that it is fragmented. This fragmentation makes it challenging to sift through and find the type of patterns that can direct how a retailer changes their customer experience to respond to specific needs and expectations
Net Promoter Score: What a Customer-Relations Metric Can Tell You About Your User Experience
In your journeys across the web, you probably have encountered the now ubiquitous question “How likely are you to recommend this website to a friend?” It is the question behind the net-promoter score, a customer-loyalty metric that is often used as a gauge of your user experience. The net
the attention economy
4 Noteworthy Intranet Design Trends in 2019
Ever presence of tools is another theme this year. For example, a toolbar with custom favorites and tools appeared on every page of the 3M intranet. Similarly, every page on the Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization’s intranet offered a waffle menu that led to essential
Experience Design: Bridging Brand Intention and Brand Interpretation
Too often, teams will stop after the articulation of Brand attributes, with no understanding of what those words really mean, or how to apply those concepts to product or interface design. Create a framework to support the meaning of Brand attributes and extend them to different areas of experience
Tooltip Guidelines
Tooltips are hard to discover because they often lack visual cues. If tooltips are erratically displayed throughout your site, people may never discover them. It’s important to be consistent and provide tooltips for all the elements in your design rather than just for some. If only some of the
6 Tips for Successful Personalization
As personalization has become increasingly possible on intranets throughout the years, we’ve seen an increase in the number of sites that provide an “out” to personalization, often for troubleshooting purposes. One concern with personalization is that it results in an experience that differs
Instructional Overlays and Coach Marks for Mobile Apps
The Makr iPad app uses a series of tips each time the user reaches a new section of the app. Unfortunately, these tips are overly wordy, and present a multi-step workflow before the user has been able to do anything. Rather than learning-by-doing, users must memorize all of the steps before being
Join WP Engine at SXSW 2019
In this panel, Brunner will be joined by popular Austin figures as they discuss who and what has been the major change agent in Austin. Brunner will represent technology while other panelists will represent food and film. Joe Nick Patoski, author of Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers
the attention economy
WP Engine Sales and Customer Service Teams Recognized at The Stevie Awards
The Stevie Awards are a set of hundreds of business awards given annually by the American Business Awards organization. They were created in 2002 to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of companies and business people worldwide. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards are given to
WordPress for Good: The Price of Water .
This year, WP Engine partnered with The Lovie Awards to bring Lovie For Good, a project highlighting digital experiences bringing positive change to the world. From an algorithm to promote compassionate leadership to campaigns recognizing the importance of fresh air, these winners are using the
Expandable Menus: Pull-Down, Square, or Pie?
Gmail for iPad: The hamburger icon (top screenshot) expands a sliding menu that pushes the menu handle (the hamburger) towards the middle of the page (bottom screenshot). Even if the finger position were to stay unchanged after the menu got expanded, the user would have to move it out of the way to
The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
And yet, some patterns emerging today break these fundamental guidelines. The magnifying-glass icon saves space, so more websites use it. It’s OK to be flexible with previous guidelines, so long as we acknowledge that the users’ needs remain unchanged. People don’t care what the search area
User Intent Affects Filter Design
Interactive filtering has another disadvantage: continuous updates can be visually distracting, even if they are fast and don’t scroll the page. Any time items in a results list update, the flicker of an image swap will attract attention (though it probably will not be clear what exactly
4 Things Spotify Can Teach You About Data Sharing
Spotify, for its part, shares data only as Noyes suggests. Although the music service does allow advertisers to target listeners based on their psychographic and demographic traits, it doesn’t let them see the profile data of specific users. When Spotify does share user statistics, such as part
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
The hardest thing about the re-design was integrating the tableless CSS design into Radio Userland. I had to do some jiggery-pokery with the Radio Userland templates and macros, and the CSS implementation is not yet complete. I’ve had to temporarily remove my blogroll and topicroll, along
the attention economy
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
Secrets of Financial Applications: Traits of Fintech Apps
Blockchain fintech technology is on the rise and a must-have nowadays for these companies. Using this technology will create further confidence in the users as it is the building block for the app’s transparency. In essence, blockchain development does not allow a single transaction to be
We recently ran a usability study in the U.K. where one user was attempting the following task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on washing machines?" Without much trouble, the user arrived at this homepage for Siemens Appliances in the U.K.: User task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on
"Get Started" Stops Users
We asked one study participant to find a cell-phone plan from a carrier different than his own. He immediately visited the T-Mobile website and remarked that he had friends and family using its service. He was looking specifically for a service plan that would allow him to keep his current device
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
It appears that other factors (such as the contrast, padding, and legibility of the brand name) affect brand recall more than the position in the center of the page versus the top left corner. For example, the Nolitan hotel websites had a background image behind the logo, which may have
