This is my first entry to document what I’ve been learning in web design. With my Psychology/Neuroscience background, I am interested in the user experience side of design, as well as the coding. I don’t know much about this field from a designer’s perspective, but I will write from a neuroscientist’s viewpoint. A central topic in UX design is attention and what holds a user’s interest. In a world that is increasingly focused on e-commerce, companies don’t want to lose business because customers find a website confusing or visually offensive. Some questions that may arise are: where are customers looking on the screen? How long are they staying on the website? At what point are the things that grab users’ attention, like bright colors and videos playing, too much? To understand how attention works, one must understand why the attention mechanism is necessary. Our senses are bombarded with more stimuli than we can possibly process. Our visual system alone is an evolutionary achievement, with more than 1.5 million axons exiting the retina. But a great deal of this information about our visual environment is irrelevant to us, so two types of attention exist to filter this input: bottom-up and top-down processing.
Bottom-up processing refers to sensory specializations, such as the ability to make quick and accurate eye movements and the development of the fovea, an area of the eye specialized for sharp central visual focus, which we use for reading or driving. On the other hand, top-down sensitivity control involves higher cognitive processes, which voluntarily focus attention. For instance, the content of short-term memory can influence the processing of new information. Top-down processing is associated with goals and targets and is sometimes referred to as “sustained attention” since subjects will focus for extended periods of time. In contrast, bottom-up attention is more transient. However, even top-down attention has its limits. A good general rule to stay within these limits, is to only present the information that people really need and to determine exactly what this is through user research.
In both bottom-up and top-down processing, attended objects cause an amplified neuronal response in the visual cortex, which in turn leads to better memory storage of the item. Neuronal responses to unattended stimuli are suppressed. With this in mind, how do we make information on the screen behaviorally relevant to the customer viewing our website? To start with, people are programmed to pay attention to anything that is different or novel. In neuroscience, we refer to salience as the quality in which an item stands out in relation to its neighbors. The hippocampus, an area of the brain in the medial temporal lobe, assesses the salience of objects by using past memories to filter the processing of new stimuli. A delicate balance must be struck between content that attracts a user’s attention, which is not enough to be distracting. For instance, there are cases where salient stimuli can unintentionally attract a user’s attention. In a psychology experiment, a user might be attending to all red items, but a loud bang will easily draw their attention away. Annoying pop-up ads on a website are the equivalent of a loud bang.
People are also influenced by unconscious emotional processing. The amygdala, located deep within the medial temporal region of the brain, is the area of the brain associated with memory, emotional processing and decision-making. This is one of the oldest areas of the brain, what neuroscientists often refer to as the “lizard brain.” The “lizard brain” controls our most basic instincts: fear, hunger and sexual arousal. The amygdala is only the size of an almond, but it gets priority in the brain over the slower, rational part of our brain: the frontal lobe. This has an evolutionary advantage in helping us avoid predators and other dangers, but it also explains why sex, food and danger have a priority in grabbing our attention. The saying “sex sells” is true for a reason.
So, to recap:
- People get overwhelmed very easily, so try to provide only the features that people really need. Do user research and adjust your website accordingly. For instance, if people need contact details, don’t bury them so deep within the website that it discourages people from calling.
- People are attracted to what is different or novel, but too many attention-seeking features will make users distracted.
- The emotional brain affects most of our decisions, so food, sex and danger will always attract a user’s attention.