Designing for Focus In A Distracted World:
A Proposal for New Design Heuristics
by
Annie Tianci Zhang Submitted to the Department of Architecture
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Art and Design
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology May 2020
© 2020 Annie Zhang All Rights Reserved
The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or
hereafter created.
Signature of Author ... ... Department of Architecture, May 7, 2020
Certified by ... Lee Moreau Undergraduate Lecturer Thesis Supervisor Accepted by... Leslie K. Norford Professor of Building Technology Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee
Designing for Focus In A Distracted World:
A Proposal for New Design Heuristics
by
Annie Tianci Zhang
Submitted to the Department of Architecture on
May 7, 2020 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Art and Design
ABSTRACT
People feel happy when deeply focused on something meaningful. Yet, it is increasingly difficult to focus in our attention-extractive economy because the technology driving our consumer products exceeds our human vulnerabilities. Cognition research has long shown that constantly being distracted by our devices decreases our performance on complex tasks and deteriorates our emotional health. So far, attempted solutions (such as screen usage limits) have largely placed the responsibility of corrective action on the user. However, when it comes to more traditionally harmful products, the responsibility lies with product designers to design less harmful products and warn users of risks. Why should it be any different for our devices
The responsibility still lies with the product designers to create products that don’t exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. However, designers have no framework to follow. Designers are currently generating concepts based on short-sighted design heuristics (guidelines) that aim to reduce product failure and user confusion when using the product. Instead of only considering functionality, we need a framework to turn us toward the freedom of focus. New heuristics should be introduced that help us prioritize the protection of our minds and allow users to reclaim their control of their attention.
This research details a process for discovering new focus-oriented design heuristics, as well as a proposal for 10 focus-oriented heuristics that have been demonstrated to improve the quality of concepts generated by junior designers.
Thesis Advisor: Lee Moreau
BACKGROUND
Our economies are founded on how we move goods and commodities between parties, and thus by extension they are founded on the resources we need to extract. In the past, this resource extraction has led to fairly straightforward trades: crops, manufactured goods, and skilled services. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the Information Revolution has expanded our definition of tradable resources to include data, knowledge, and communication infrastructure. Within the Information Revolution, a sub-movement has been set in motion: the “Attention Revolution” which is marked by the shift away from a labor economy to a knowledge-work based economy. In knowledge work, what is valued is human capital and the human ability to focus and think hard to solve problems. Advertisers also know that the more attention a person gives to something, the more likely they are to make purchasing decisions. The result is that companies are increasingly dependent on how to capture our attention, and turn it into profit.
The Attention Revolution is based on an idea of attention-extraction, and it has created rifts at both the societal and individual level. At the societal level, the tools of the attention-extractive economy have changed the nature of public discourse and the education of the next generation. 1
While digital social platforms have made public discourse faster and more accessible than ever, these same platforms have made us vulnerable to misinformation, manipulation, and outrage. Alarmingly, a recent MIT study showed that false news spreads six times faster than true news. 2
The floodgates have also opened for the youngest members of society. Information is more accessible than ever, but also without the careful curation and modulation required to teach complex concepts to impressionable children. For example, in the past few years, parents have increasingly reported horrifying videos depicting “well-known characters in violent or lewd situations” being accessible to, and even recommended to, their children by indiscriminate Youtube algorithms. 3
Narrowing in on the individual level, studies suggest that the race to occupy the lion’s share of our attention has resulted in a decline of cognition abilities, compromised mental health, and decreased levels of empathy and connection in interpersonal communication. For example, 4
many people report feeling anxious about the side effects of smartphone use on their ability to focus on complex, important, and meaningful tasks. This wariness is corroborated by an
emerging body of psychology and cognitive science research. A 2017 study found that the mere presence of a smartphone—even if turned off—can cause a decrease in cognitive capacity. This 5
increased anxiety is also symptomatic of a decline in personal mental wellbeing. A series of studies have shown that even ten minutes of passive Facebook browsing can increase feelings of envy in study participants leading them to report feeling worse at the end of the day. The 6 1 “Ledger of Harms,” accessed October 28, 2019, https://ledger.humanetech.com/.
2 Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” Science 359,
no. 6380 (March 9, 2018): 1146–51, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559.
3 “On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters - The New York Times,” accessed October 28, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html.
4 “Ledger of Harms.”
5 Adrian F. Ward et al., “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available
Cognitive Capacity,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2, no. 2 (April 1, 2017): 140–54, https://doi.org/10.1086/691462.
6 Philippe Verduyn et al., “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-Being: Experimental and
Longitudinal Evidence,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144, no. 2 (April 2015): 480–88, http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.mit.edu/10.1037/xge0000057.
cascading effects of the tools of the Attention Revolution are inescapable. Today, most people find themselves spending a majority of their time in organizations and companies that depend on network tools (such as email) for interpersonal communication. This dimension of the Attention Revolution backlash has been understood for perhaps the longest. A series of five NCBI studies in 2005 found that people overestimate their ability to interpret tone over text communication, and thus vastly overestimate their ability to communicate effectively over email. 7
Fortunately, whistleblowers both within and external to the technology industry have sounded the alarm on how our everyday technology is enabling the Attention Revolution. Some software companies have been relatively quick to respond to public concern and have already begun testing new features that aim to reduce their monopoly on our attention. Another player in this emerging field is The Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit group that is researching and advocating for companies to stop designing products, services, and systems that prey on our attention.
While software solutions can be helpful in bringing awareness to the problem of distraction and provide limited choices to users, software-centric solutions may be limited options because they are implemented only at the level of the way the device is programmed. At present, there are no hardware-centric solutions: features or solutions that are implemented at the physical product level, aside from a mute button, or an on-off switch. In addition, there has been very little research done on how hardware-centric solutions could alleviate the Attention Revolution problem. Even more critical is studying the heuristics, norms, and philosophies of hardware product design. These norms currently enable and/or push designers to build products that demand our attention. For example, most products are designed to use light, sounds, or vibration to notify, remind, inform, or alert the user in some way. The design norms embedded in these products over-communicate in order to avoid delaying the communicating of information to users. In other words, most products are designed under the assumption that more information and communication is good, regardless of whether such information is important, urgent or relevant to the user..
The purpose of this background chapter is to first review the literature on why we get distracted, the impact of distraction, and the current solutions that address the problem of everyday
distractions. Section 2 of this chapter reviews the psychological benefits of staying focused. Section 3 explains the mechanics of distraction. Section 4 explores the consequences of being distracted. Section 5 looks at the public perception of how our technology is harming or helping us. Then Section 6 examines the recommended solutions proposed by organizations and individual thought-leaders in this emerging movement against the Attention Revolution. Lastly in Section 7, this background discusses the consequence of design heuristics – the assumptions and guidelines that designers use as reference or shorthand to aid their concept generation.
Section 2: What are the benefits of staying focused?
Many philosophers and religious traditions teach that happiness and fulfillment come from living in the present moment. The past three decades of psychology research on happiness, have returned findings that support these teachings. One of the most noted happiness-researchers is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychology professor who was the first to recognize, name, and
7 Justin Kruger et al., “Egocentrism over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?,” Journal of
rigorously study the concept of “flow”: a highly focused and energized mental state in which a person is fully immersed in the process of an activity. His now famous Experience Sampling Study examined a group of teenagers who were given beepers that went off during random times throughout the day. These participants were asked to record their thoughts and feelings every time the beeper went off. In their recorded responses, Csikszentmihalyi found that when the participants were highly focused on a challenging task, they generally self-reported themselves as happier. In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he summarizes his findings: ”The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” 8
Csikszentmihalyi’s research is echoed closely by the research of Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert who repeated a version of the Experience Sampling Study in 2010 using an iPhone application instead of beepers. They found that no matter what activity a participant was doing, a 9
mental deviation from that activity (a wandering mind) decreased the participant’s level of happiness. Although neither study specifically defines a wandering mind as a lack of focus and as distraction, a wandering mind is clearly the opposite of that sustained state of voluntary focus that is tied to positive consequences on our emotional and mental states described in these studies. In essence, contrary to what product sellers would have us believe, it seems that our distracting devices, our phones, computers, tablets and digital wearables may be making us less happy.
Section 3: What are the mechanics of distraction?
If we agree that a state of sustained focus may be worth trying to achieve, it is important to understand why we often fail to achieve it. Scientists have long been searching for the mechanism by which the brain suppresses extraneous information and allows us to focus.
Recently MIT researcher Michael Halassa identified the precise brain circuit that is responsible for blocking out distractions. Halassa identified a thin layer of inhibitory neurons called the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) working in concert with a brain structure called the basal ganglia (BG) make up an information filtering “circuit” between our sensory neurons and our brain’s cortical regions for complex processing. One of the important takeaways from his research is that this brain circuit does not act like a spotlight that emphasizes important inputs, rather it is an inhibitory process that dims the lights for everything unimportant. In short, when our brain is able to 10
manage the cognitive load of dimming out extraneous inputs, we are able to successfully focus on what we want. When the brain is unable to activate the circuit for all the extraneous inputs, we become distracted.
There is considerable cognitive load in activating this circuit. However, even before the discovery of this brain circuit, we already understood empirically that some interruptions are more
distracting than others. Gillie and Broadbent identified that it was not the duration of an
interruption that mattered, but the complexity of the interruption and how much it differed from
8 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Row, 2009). 9 M. A. Killingsworth and D. T. Gilbert, “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,” Science 330, no. 6006
(November 12, 2010): 932–932, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439.
10 “To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight | Quanta Magazine,” accessed October 20,
the main task that contributed to the level of distraction a new input would have. Together these 11
two studies give us more information about the brain’s critical mechanism for filtering out distractions, and this filtering seems to be especially vulnerable to distractions that shift us into starkly different, and complex tasks.
Section 4: What is the impact of being distracted?
A wide range of studies examining both explicit and implicit distractions in different contexts show that negative consequences exist in just about any case of distraction. The first to consider in this category is a recent study of explicit distractions, presented during a spatial attention task. Using eye-tracking, the authors of this study determined that when participants working at a computer were visually cued to task-switch, longer response times and higher error rates occurred when the subject returned to the original computer task at hand. The set-up of this 12
study is analogous to the pop-up notifications of our software products and to the attention grabbing advertisements that populate the periphery of our digital content. This study suggests that a quick glance at the advertisement or the banner notification is enough to throw us off track of the main task we are in the midst of.
Another study by Adrian Ward shows that even without notification-like interruptions, our
products can be implicitly distracting. Researchers found that even when participants avoided the temptation to check their phones during a task, the mere presence of their smartphone caused a decrease in performance. Awareness of a smartphone occupies limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. This team also found that the higher the smartphone dependence of the
participant, the higher the cognitive costs, even when participants maintain sustained attention at a task unrelated to their smartphone. In this study, the phone becomes an implicit distraction. It 13
does not request the participant to attend to a notification or to answer a text, but the presence of the phone implies that some action or attention must be paid to it. This study is also one of the first to show that it is not inherently a screen or software interface problem, rather is it a problem with how we relate to our device. These two studies together show that whether explicitly or implicitly, distracting devices reduce our performance and cognition abilities. While a decline in cognitive abilities does not necessarily deprive us of the happiness that Csikszentmihalyi
discusses in his study on flow, a cognitive decline is also decidedly not a contributor to increased happiness or wellbeing.
Section 5: What are common perceptions of the impact of distraction?
While there is an abundance of literature on the consequences of distraction, does public
perception agree with the research findings? The answer is, expectedly, more complicated than a simple yes or no. Most people can identify some benefits and drawbacks of using their digital devices. However, in a recent study of participants who had to deal with 63.5 notifications on average per day, the notifications were typically viewed within minutes, and not considered a
11 Tony Gillie and Donald Broadbent, “What Makes Interruptions Disruptive? A Study of Length, Similarity,
and Complexity,” Psychological Research 50, no. 4 (April 1, 1989): 243–50, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309260.
12 Cai S. Longman et al., “Attentional Inertia and Delayed Orienting of Spatial Attention in Task-Switching,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 40, no. 4 (August 2014): 1580–1602, http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.mit.edu/10.1037/a0036552.
distraction. Instead, participants attributed their relationships or needs for their devices to social pressure in personal communication. In other words, while an increase in the number of
notifications was associated with an increase in negative emotions, at the same time receiving more messages and social network updates made the participants feel more connected with others. There is a gray-zone where the social benefits of connecting with others are closely tied 14
to negative individual consequences of responding to distractions. As such, it becomes difficult to identify a behavioral solution or even come to a consensus of how to address the problem.
A survey conducted by the Common Sense Research Group echoes these mixed feelings: 72% of teens and 48% of parents feel social pressure to respond immediately to texts, but over half of parents think their teens are addicted to their devices, and half of teens agree. Again, we see 15
the tension between social reward and a personal consequence. These two studies indicate that social expectations play a large role in sustaining a destructive habit. Therefore, there is a
solution-space to be explored in expectation management—how can we shift the culture around communication?
Section 6: What are currently recommended solutions for minimizing distraction?
The tools of an attention extraction economy are accelerating and growing, but some companies have taken it upon themselves to provide ameliorative tools that counter the addictive and damaging effects of their original products. In 2019, the two dominant mobile operating systems, iOS and Android, have features that report product use statistics in order to be completely transparent with users about how much time they actually spend on their smartphones. These are perceived as minimal efforts, as these companies try not to explicitly admit their product’s potentially harmful effects, or prescribe any specific way users should engage with their products or even put down these products. Outside of these hesitant steps taken by industry giants, individuals and collectives have drawn up their own action plans. Cal Newport, a Georgetown professor and author of many books on the merits of focus, recommends a 30-day digital detox. 16
Like the solutions provided by tech companies, Newport’s solution still puts the onus on the user to make the change and put down the device. Nir Eyal, the man who literally wrote the book on addictive tech with his bestseller Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products, has recently published his book on how to undo it all, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. In his first book, he writes to the designers and engineers of products. But in his second book, he writes to the user, and like Cal Newport, he also expects that the user takes responsibility for getting out of the vortex of distractions they find themselves in. 17
The only group that has come close to demanding that designers take responsibility for their impact on users is a research and activism group called the Center for Humane Technology. The
14 Martin Pielot, Karen Church, and Rodrigo de Oliveira, “An In-Situ Study of Mobile Phone Notifications,” in
Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services, MobileHCI ’14 (Toronto, ON, Canada: Association for Computing Machinery, 2014), 233–242, https://doi.org/10.1145/2628363.2628364.
15 “Dealing with Devices: The Parent-Teen Dynamic | Common Sense Media,” accessed October 29, 2019,
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/technology-addiction-concern-controversy-and-finding-balance-infog raphic.
16 Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (New York: Portfolio,
Penguin, 2019).
17 “Addicted to Screens? That’s Really a You Problem - The New York Times,” accessed October 28, 2019,
Center for Humane Technology has published a Humane Design Guide that functions as a worksheet for identifying weaknesses in products that may be exploiting human vulnerabilities. 18
In short, most of the solutions currently offered are software-centric, and they again place the responsibility on the user rather than the designers.
Section 7: What design heuristics currently exist for product design? What design heuristics exist for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)?
Cleary, the user-product relationship is complex when it comes to our smartphones and computers. Understanding how users relate to a product requires understanding the design heuristics (a generalized set of norms and design considerations) that drove the product design process. One of the most widely accepted sets of HCI design heuristics is published by Nielsen Norman Group, a leading user-experience research group. Their ten heuristics are as follows:
1. Visibility of system status: the system should keep the user informed about what is going on through appropriately timed feedback.
2. Match between system and real world: the system should use the language and concepts familiar to the user and follow real-world conventions of communication.
3. User control and freedom: Users should be able to leave an erroneous or unwanted state of the system without having too much trouble.
4. Consistency and standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words or actions mean the same thing.
5. Error prevention: Eliminate error-prone conditions and warn users before they commit to actions.
6. Recognition rather than recall: Make objects, actions, and options visible so the user does not need to remember information from one part of the system to another.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use: the system should be usable for both inexperienced and experienced users.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design: do not contain information that is irrelevant as it competes with and diminishes the value of relevant information.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: error messages should be specific and constructive in suggesting a solution.
10. Help and documentation: Any supporting documentation should be easy to search and list concrete steps to be carried out. 19
It is important to note that design heuristics are a starting point for designers to generate and evaluate ideas. Two different designers could create different features using the same heuristic, but both features would try to achieve the goal set by the heuristic in slightly different ways. It is possible that “user control and freedom” could be interpreted as a requirement to let users stay focused. However none of these heuristics explicitly calls for the prioritization of the user’s sustained focus. The current heuristics focus mostly on reducing the failure and confusion when using the product. Just as failure avoidance is a completely different goal than performance
18 “Design Guide (Alpha Version) - Center for Humane Technology,” accessed November 1, 2019,
https://humanetech.com/designguide/.
19 World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience, “10 Heuristics for User Interface Design: Article by
Jakob Nielsen,” Nielsen Norman Group, accessed October 29, 2019, https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/.
optimization, so too this set of design heuristics is different from a set of heuristics that optimizes for the user’s experience and freedom for focus.
Section 8: A Case Study in Design Heuristics: Measure of Man
In 1960, renowned industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss published his book, Measure of Man. The publication of this book became a pivotal moment in design history. It contained extensive research on the human body and its movements and it’s pages were filled with diagrams that detailed the measurements of the average male body and measurements of the body’s range of motion. These measurements became heuristics, and designers took these shorthands as truths. This book became a reliable reference for designers all across America, akin to a thesaurus for an editor or trigonometric look-up tables for an engineer. While “Measure of Man” ushered in a new age of rigorous standardization in design as well as revived the study of ergonomics, the more damaging implications of this book were that these heuristics did not fit everyone. The generation of designers that followed Dreyfuss ultimately designed a world of products that were made for the “average man”. Evidently, heuristics are a powerful agent in changing the behavior of designers, but they can also lead to some unintended consequences.
MOTIVATION
The literature shows that humans benefit from sustained focus in a meaningful task, and that constant distraction from those meaningful tasks reduces our cognitive abilities and our mental wellbeing. For the most part, people know that these distractions are bad for them in one way or another, but there is compelling social motivation to stay connected and distracted and to appear more easily accessible or connected at any given time. The current design heuristics do not provide a framework that considers or values focus as a requirement in product design. As such, tech companies and individuals continue to experiment with their own solutions. These solutions are passive, software-dependent, and ultimately the expectation is put on the end user to solve a problem, ostensibly not of his or her own creation.
Is it not the responsibility of the product designer to take responsibility for the consequences of their products? Designers need to formally acknowledge the importance of preserving users’ sustained focus, and this acknowledgement would be most effective in the form of a new design heuristic that serves to guide the concept generation of new products. Current solutions have been implemented via software, because software is relatively easy to update and change. We have already begun to see that these passive software “solutions” are not enough. Furthermore, this new design heuristic that seeks to value focus should be applicable to both software and hardware designs, because our most complex products are never solely one or the other.
METHODOLOGY
This research was conducted through 2 qualitative studies: (1) a set of user interviews and (2) an A/B study. All participants were undergraduate students with design experience, defined for this study as having taken at least 2 collegiate design classes. The objective of the user interviews was to understand mental models surrounding the concept of focus and to generate content from which heuristics could be identified. Using the design heuristics obtained through the user interviews, the A/B study examined how these design students responded to a design prompt depending on the heuristics they were provided.
User Interviews
6 participants were interviewed in the first study. The study consisted of 3 activities: a warm-up design exercise, a journey map discussion, and a final design exercise.
Warm-Up: The warm-up design exercise prompt was to “design a better phone case” in 10 minutes. This exercise was intentionally fast-paced in order to encourage participants to start thinking creatively and get in the habit of vocalizing thought processes.
Journey Map: The journey map exercise was a longer discussion that took about 25 minutes. In order to get each participant to start articulating their thoughts on the very abstract concept of focus, the journey map discussion was preceded by some “calibration questions”:
● How would you define focus? What are synonyms and what are antonyms? ● What does it look like when somebody is focused? How do they feel?
● What does it look like when somebody is not in a state of focus? How do they feel? ● When you are feeling unfocused (and you desire to be in a state of focus), what do you do
to change your mental state to become more focused?
Then, each participant was asked to graph their focus levels on a typical Monday: “Please map out your typical Monday from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. On the vertical axis, please indicate your relative state of focus. You can make annotations or notes, please indicate any activities, events, and people that are part of your typical Monday.” This journey map helped to identify emotions and triggers surrounding states of focus and unfocus. The journey map also helped to frame some discussion on any contradictions between action and mental models discussed in the calibration questions.
● What are you feeling at this high/low point?
● Are there any parts of this journey map that are less than ideal for you? ● How would you change it?
● What sparked this change in mental state? Did you do this intentionally?
Design Exercise
The final activity in the user interview was a design exercise in which the prompt was to
“brainstorm and design the conditions that would lead you to have maximum focus.” The output of this activity was intentionally left open, and as a result the designs ranged from a list of sensory inputs, to a detailed blueprint of an office space, to written proposals.
Fig 1: Example of a journey map produced by a study participant.
Fig 2: Example of a design exercise output produced by a study participant.
Identifying New Heuristics
After all user interviews were completed, there were 6 new designs from which focus-oriented heuristics could be extracted. The process used is the same one used in the 2016 study by the Journal of Mechanical Design.
1. Define the functions, key features, and what makes this concept unique
2. Hypothesize heuristics for each function, describe component interactions within the product
3. Identify possible heuristics
4. Identify design criteria that were met by the product
5. Identify two other product to serve as examples of the implemented heuristic 6. Describe how each similar product used the heuristic to identify different ways of
implementation. 20
Through the user interviews, 10 possible heuristics were identified. The extracted heuristics are presented below with examples of how they are used in current consumer products:
1. Provide additional resources/tools in an organized, easily accessible format.
a. This medication delivery service sorts and packages medicine in single-serve packets that are organized by date and time of consumption for each unique user. 2. Create congruence between physical state and mental state of the user.
a. This office chair can be tuned precisely to the user’s body size and shape. The chair holds the user in a correct body posture so that they can comfortably work at their desks for extended lengths (ie: the whole work day).
3. Provide visual and/or spatial framing for the user.
a. This task lamp provides light and wifi. The light visually frames the space with and the range of the wireless signal transmitter spatially frames the region available for use (within a direct line of sight from lamp to receiver dongle).
4. Remove environmental stimuli that competes with or obstructs the purpose of the product.
a. These headphones filter out external sounds so that the music can be heard more clearly.
5. Introduce cues or rituals that initiate desired patterns/behaviors/habits.
a. This electronic toothbrush utilizes a vibrating timer at 30 second intervals to let the user know when to brush a different part of their mouth.
6. Eliminate cues that initiate undesired patterns/behaviors/habits.
a. This TV displays a selection of artworks when it is turned off. The cue of a TV that’s waiting to be turned on is removed and changed into a more neutral object in the home.
7. Impose structure and constraints on unstructured activity.
a. This fitness app provides weekly and monthly challenges for users. This gives users smaller milestones to work towards within the larger, unstructured objective of improving fitness.
8. Reduce cognitive load by reducing information to what’s most essential.
a. This public transit map eliminates most streets and landmarks in order to be more clearly readable and searchable for relevant transit route information.
20 Seda Yilmaz et al., “Design Heuristics in Innovative Products,” Journal of Mechanical Design 138, no. 7
9. Clearly communicate to the user what the available next steps are.
a. This children’s toy has many parts to build a complex object, but it includes a step-by-step guide for how to build the object.
10. Allow the user to easily access feedback on their progress or performance.
a. This activity tracking wearable device displays the user’s daily step count right underneath where it displays the time. The user can access feedback on their progress whenever they desire.
A/B Study
In order to see if the focus-oriented heuristics have any bearing on the designs that are
generated, we need to compare between two groups: a control (Group A) and an experimental group (Group B). Both group A and B had 7 participants, and all participants were given 20 minutes to answer the same design prompt: “Please design a new product that would improve focus while studying”. Prior to the study, Group A was given a sheet of 40 hardware product design heuristics to read. Group B was given a similar sheet of 40 heuristics: 30 of the most used heuristics from Group A plus 10 of those heuristics identified from the user study. The intent of providing the heuristics ahead of the design exercise was to prime the participants with different information, in order to see if the presented heuristics impacted their design work. In order to not draw any extra attention to the 10 focus-oriented heuristics, the 10 heuristics were “implanted” into the same page, with the same formatting and graphic style. Both Group A and Group B heuristic sheets are presented in the two figures below.
Fig 3: 40 design heuristics developed from evaluating 400 innovative products. Adapted from the Journal of Mechanical Design, this is the set of heuristics used by Group A. 21
Fig 4: This is the set of heuristics used by Group B. Note that heuristics 4, 6, 12, 16, 19, 26, 28, 34, 35, and 40 have been replaced with focus-oriented heuristics.
RESULTS
The 10 focus-oriented heuristics previously discussed were presented to Group B in the A/B study. In order to evaluate the efficacy of these heuristics, the designs produced in Group A and B were evaluated and then compared. Two blind coders were consulted to rate each design on a 1-7 Likert scale. 1 being equivalent to “very negatively impacts focus”, 4 being equivalent to “has no impact on ability focus” and 7 being equivalent to “very effective for improving focus”. Although there was only a 50% agreement between the coders for individual ratings, they both agreed on average. Results are summarized in the table below.
Coder 1 Coder 2 Total Average 4.42 3.36 Group A Average 4.14 3.14 Group B Average 4.71 3.57 A/B Difference 0.57 0.43
Table 1: Tabulated results of two independent coders.
Although Coder 1 and 2 didn’t agree on the rating for each individual design, when the designs are considered as a whole group they both agreed that Group B produced slightly better results. For both coders, Group B was rated about half a point higher than Group A, which indicates that the focus-oriented heuristics may have helped to produce ideas that are more effective for allowing a user to focus.
CONCLUSION
Although qualitative studies of this scale are rarely ever conclusive, this is a promising start. Literature shows that design heuristics are used--consciously or subconsciously--when presented as a standard for design. This research has shown a way to identify new heuristics for the
objective of improving use focus. Most importantly it has also verified that these new heuristics were measurably effective in the original intent: to help designers generate more
focus-supportive product concepts.
DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK
The results of this research have ethical implications. While the literature shows that sustained focus is good for human wellbeing, to impose that requirement becomes a conversation of our values as designers. Some designers may not value the need for focus. In that case, is it wrong to codify and dogmatically present these focus-oriented design heuristics? We return to the case of the Measure of Man and Woman. The heuristics that we establish to be truth shape the world that we are building. We should take care to not blindly accept heuristics and to diligently check our assumptions that are hidden within these heuristics. The power of heuristics is to impose some expectations or precedents for designers. If the expectation for prioritizing focus is set at the inception of every product’s design, it may be possible to establish new norms associated not only with product design, but also social expectations.
For designers that do share this value of focus, there is still more work to be done. These studies were done at a small scale. Given the power of heuristics to shape how designers work, more robust testing of these heuristics should be done to verify that the results hold at larger scales
and across different design problems. Research also needs to be done at longer time scales. These studies took less than an hour, but designers work on problems for much longer than an hour. We have yet to understand if these heuristics hold up for product design projects that span
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