Humans have close, near and far attention states. The closer a human is to what they are working on, the more focused they can be. Its a fuzzy gradient but theres certain states that can be identified. Each state requires a different UI strategy.
- CLOSE – In my hands – Mobile phones trigger humans close work and focus state, which is good for doing one difficult thing with many steps. UIs for this use case, should limit how much they present to the user at one time, and its totally fine to increase the number of click throughs that the user has to make to get things done. If the UI is too cluttered and too many elements are on the screen in such a close screen, it will slow down the human.
- NEAR – People Im interacting with – Desktop devices trigger humans near attention state. UIs for this case should present more options at once to the user. Dont transfer the Mobile screen strategy of having just a few things to choose from. Human will scan the screen for what it wants. But if there is a table or list with many elements, then it must be sorted, such as alphabetically or numerically – social media has found some different ways of sorting lists that works. This is the state where human can handle the most information and choices, as long as its reasonably arranged and sorted. Laptops are terrible things because using the keyboard puts the screen too close – it overlaps the incompatible zones. Many people set up a separate keyboard and mouse so their laptop screen is further away. Its more comfortable because the screen with lots of info is outside the close zone.
- FAR – My environment – Outside of personal device range. Driving trigger this mode and its UI is mostly worked out, for safety reasons. Far focus is wide and takes in all things. Too much information overwhelms this state.
UI practices for mobile are progressing reasonably well, but stop heading down the limited mobile UI path for desktops and laptops. Its the wrong way. Understanding that humans have different focus states will inform all design decisions.
kodintent 