Our attention is valuable. Digital products spend countless dollars wrestling over the where our eyeballs go. While we devote fractions of seconds to reading and deleting, browsing, filtering. All of that time adds up. It takes cognitive energy to process each piece of information. Each article we read, product we compare, video we watch, and song that we play, we are always asking ourselves the same question: Is this worth my time?
Applying an economic metaphor makes sense. Time is a democratized currency that we all have to spend. How we choose to spend it says a lot about who we are. This one of the reasons why user experience is so critical. With the deluge of content intended to distract us our ability to focus on tasks and goals has become even more important. We value systems that provide us with what we are looking for in the most effortless way. Those experiences that seek to—intentionally or otherwise—distract our lizard brains from what we seek are deemed are not seen as useful.
So how do we create products that empower users and allow them to increase their focus? Some believe the path lies in offering less, not more. Steve Jobs famously said “Focus is about saying “no” to almost everything..so you can say yes to the right things.” We learn as much about user behavior from what a user doesn’t choose, than from what they do. But sometimes offering less is not an option.
If you are Amazon, less products goes against your business model. No, the answer lies in offering the right types of information at the right time. This means anticipating questions users have as they navigate the site and showing them the right content at the right time. It means giving them tools to filter down their options. Author Daniel Pink says in his book Drive, “Prospects of prize narrows focus.” The more we can help the user along the path to their destination, the more often they are likely to take the journey again.