A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#201

Post by solaceb » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:53 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #196

Having heard this call for years, I've come to the conclusion that this is the 21st century's "TV rots your brain." We've replaced channel surfing with doom scrolling. TV stations are mostly run by white men, too. At best, I can say that there's a fundamental human need to stare into space for a while. We could delete all technology tomorrow, and we wouldn't magically be less distracted. At least now, there's a hope…

I think you’re conflating cultural phenomenon (people like to dissociate by losing themselves in consumption) with biological fact.

Humans 10,000 years ago may have spaced out and daydreamed. But this daydreaming was probably very different in psychological effect from scrolling feeds. The two are not even close to the same

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#202

Post by test_epsilon » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #33

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Ironically, the slideshow format is extremely 'low density', and frustrates my ability to quickly read what they have to say. I didn't get all the way through it either.

It's meant to be clicked through quickly in a live presentation, like a tv show, not the 'book page' style that most people have a harder time with absorbing. It's not a blog article.

Would be kind of clever if it was actually intended to waste time and frustrate people.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#203

Post by catchmeifyoucan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:07 AM UTC

“Add a speed bump to the way you work”. I like that a lot. People work better when they pause, and I think one way to do that is being intentional. In fact, it’s not about getting to a place fastest at the cost of leaving it just as fast.

A project I’ve been working on is amna. Imagine, before you open your browser, you need to state your task. Just a little bit of friction to slow you down from jumping mindlessly and overwhelming yourself. Feel free to give it a try:

https://getamna.com

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#204

Post by chrisweekly » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #190

sillysaurusx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminalization of dark patterns? It’s not impossible to imagine — intentionally tricking a user is sometimes called fraud — but I’m not sure we’ve thought through the implications of criminalizing website design. The biggest companies are the ones least affected by regulation, because they can invest resources into complying. Small startups sometimes can’t. A teenager in their bedroom usually can’t. And that’s no sm…

In addition to fraudulent pretenses for collection, there are practices which are simply predatory or harrassment. Numerous sites present various dialogues on every visit (more so if you use incognito mode as a rule, I do), or treat Tor access highly differently from direct access (denying access entirely, raising GDPR blocks, putting various nags in the way, or popping up often-impenetrable CAPTCHA dialogues). There…

+1 Upvoted and favorited; thank you for the DDG links and for articulating my precise sentiments so clearly.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#205

Post by o8r3oFTZPE » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:23 AM UTC

catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #203

“Add a speed bump to the way you work”. I like that a lot. People work better when they pause, and I think one way to do that is being intentional. In fact, it’s not about getting to a place fastest at the cost of leaving it just as fast. A project I’ve been working on is amna. Imagine, before you open your browser, you need to state your task. Just a little bit of friction to slow you down from jumping mindlessly an…

Interesting idea. I had a similar idea for HN comments. (@dang: take note.) Impose a delay from the point when a person first makes an HTTP request for a thread, i.e., first reads a thread, before they are allowed to comment in it. This would prevent "real-time" back and forth but it would also prevent knee-jerk comments. Before commenting, a reader would have time to digest the OP and the comments and think about them. A cool-off period. This might produce better comments. It would also prevent people from just jumping into threads that have activity to post mindless commments. It would provide an incentive to dig deeper into HN than only the first page. Digging depper into HN past the front page would give the reader more potential threads she could comment in, should they become active discussions. HN already has a limit on how fast people can comment, i.e., number of comments in a given period.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#206

Post by acituan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #196

Having heard this call for years, I've come to the conclusion that this is the 21st century's "TV rots your brain." We've replaced channel surfing with doom scrolling. TV stations are mostly run by white men, too. At best, I can say that there's a fundamental human need to stare into space for a while. We could delete all technology tomorrow, and we wouldn't magically be less distracted. At least now, there's a hope…

> I've come to the conclusion that this is the 21st century's "TV rots your brain." We've replaced channel surfing with doom scrolling.

The difference with the TV is that TV didn't have individual, high granularity demographic and usage data to conform to its users' most exploitable side that ultimately drives mindless "engagement". TV ratings had coarsely sampled data at household levels and whatever broadcast was what everyone saw.

> I can say that there's a fundamental human need to stare into space for a while. We could delete all technology tomorrow, and we wouldn't magically be less distracted.

You're right that mild distraction is conducive to insight generation and as such can be thought as a need, but not all distraction is equal. Unlike a walk in the nature which has low-key wonder, expansiveness with a degree of indifference, youtube doesn't want you to be too indifferent at the risk of losing "engagement" and is pretty damn opinionated about what will keep you hooked. The latter is more like the mindless obsessive shuffling of zombies towards brains.

In other words, it would be like saying humans always consumed food for pleasure, and equivocating our modern, hyper-palatable industrial food that drives the obesity epidemic with a 14th century invention like kebabs of the Levant.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#207

Post by bckr » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

ottomanbob wrote: post #93

valw wrote: post #62

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I've been dying for a tool like this. Just want to sort hacker news by week / months. So I could stop checking everyday. Will give feedback

Algolia might do that for you

https://hn.algolia.com/

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#208

Post by lolive » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:29 AM UTC

cmehdy wrote: post #2

For other readers: this seems to be an internal google presentation made public to tell engineers to respect users' attention. I guess as a user of the website it didn't respect my attention enough to make me want to click through the whole thing. I dropped out after twenty or so clicks, having read less and less stuff after a few slides.

Aka Death By PowerPoint

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#209

Post by madrox » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

solaceb wrote: post #201

madrox wrote: post #196

Having heard this call for years, I've come to the conclusion that this is the 21st century's "TV rots your brain." We've replaced channel surfing with doom scrolling. TV stations are mostly run by white men, too. At best, I can say that there's a fundamental human need to stare into space for a while. We could delete all technology tomorrow, and we wouldn't magically be less distracted. At least now, there's a hope…

I think you’re conflating cultural phenomenon (people like to dissociate by losing themselves in consumption) with biological fact. Humans 10,000 years ago may have spaced out and daydreamed. But this daydreaming was probably very different in psychological effect from scrolling feeds. The two are not even close to the same

I don't think I'm conflating them at all. One definitely drives the other.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#210

Post by soheil » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

Honestly a lot of this is now just being done by Apple eg. bundling notifications, setting different modes like work mode on the new iOS without distractions, one app at a time this has always been the case on the iOS mainly ignoring iPad.