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Post by rushil on Apr 12, 2016 8:10:06 GMT
Like many others, I also felt that I could have used more concrete results than "folklore".
It is very hard to pick a favorite theory. I think all of them are essentially stating the same facts but through different lenses. Even if you look at the summarized version in the first post, there is barely any overlapping/conflicting observations. Take the example of me talking to a person while standing on a busy street. My focus is on the person I am talking to, hence I am rejecting bystanders beyond the physical level (that they are present) which is a part of the controlled parallel theory. I am filtering out others to focus on a person which aligns more with the filter theory. I think it's simply a case of different philosophers looking at the world via different lenses. It is impossible to choose a single lense out of them, since all of them are applicable.
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Qian
New Member
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Post by Qian on Apr 12, 2016 12:33:48 GMT
I had the opportunity to work with some interaction designers a few weeks ago "experience prototyping" a virtual reality experience. In an attempt to understand what is different and special about telling a story in VR, we conducted a series of three "experiments" (the quotations are deserved). I wrote up the synthesis of the experiments for the designers in this Medium post: medium.com/stanford-d-school/the-storyteller-s-guide-to-the-virtual-reality-audience-19e92da57497#.nv5wbt75nIn one experiment, we played out a brief scene with actors in a built out set (a bedroom). The audience member stood in the center of the room wearing glasses that mimicked how mobile VR restricts one's peripheral vision and wore headphones that played 360 sound, including a voiceover that included many of the scene's story points. There were 3 conditions: 1) restricted vision to 90 degrees of the room 2) restricted vision to 180 degrees of the room 3) full 360 degree (the room was divided using simple foam core walls). In the 360 scene, many details of the story (many of which were conveyed over the audio) were lost. For example, none of the 6 participants could remember the main character's name. Also, participants in the 360 could recall few objects from the room (but commented on the lighting and mood). It seems as though their attentional resources were spent on "higher level" information in the 360 view and that more detailed information fell away. It's possible that the audio fell away entirely. I don't really know which theory of attention this demonstrates. Is it early selection theory (filtering)? Or was there a process of identifying the most advantageous information and honing in on that? Interestingly, all of the participants in the 360 scene could identify how the main character was feeling, and in fact, commented on the overall mood of the piece. In the 90 scene, no participants felt they had enough information to describe how the character felt. The article introduced many theories on how attention impacts consciousness, clarity and intensity of perception, nevertheless I couldn't decide which one I shall use to interpret the given phenomenon. Judy's example raises an interesting point around the interaction between experience and attention. Another example of this paradox is Redicle. (i.e. spritzinc.com/) Its display streams words individually, keeps the eye centered on the same place as each new word appears. That seems a very attention-efficient solution, but I doubt if that's an enjoyable reading experience. After all, are grabbing user's attention and enriching user's sensory necessarily align with the goal of better interactive experience? |
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Post by Amy on Apr 12, 2016 13:57:34 GMT
Toby's comment about trying to "fool the filter" in ad design is interesting. It leads into all sorts of questions about what people have been trained to filter in or filter out. I think those answers might be useful for designing learning tools, as well as designing social media interactions. I'm not sure which theory to look at, and I agree with the many comments that want more results about the validity of these theories. In related to my research, it's not a strong interest, but more information about how and why we get distracted, and how that's a different cognitive process from seeking distraction when we are bored.
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Post by mmadaio on Apr 12, 2016 14:02:03 GMT
I actually really liked the way Pashler worked through the various theories, and tried to move beyond a dichotomy between early and late selection, to the 2x2 framework, and showing that there was another potential theory that was underdiscussed in the literature. I think that in itself is a useful takeaway from the reading, honestly. Particularly his caution against reification (the belief that where there is a word, there is a phenomena worthy of study), and how the terms we use to describe our phenomena of study presuppose our theoretical commitments (e.g. that attention is a resource that can be spent or divided).
I would love to get some people's take on his comment about how we shouldn't "reduce the inner act of selection to overt movements of selection such as eye movements and postural adjustment." Those of you who work with eye-tracking, how do you feel about this? I took it out of context, admittedly, and this sentence doesn't carry with it any justification for why that constitutes a reduction. It also doesn't offer suggestions for how we can capture that "inner act of selection".
Unrelated, but I also loved some of his scathing comments: "The language is evocative, but the content is unsatisfying." "Despite the patina of rigor.." Shoo.
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Post by anhong on Apr 18, 2016 3:29:47 GMT
Attention is undoubtedly a super important topic in HCI. We design technologies to enhance the human being. There is no limitation to technology, but there is for human. We are very much limited by our own processors: how much levels we can feel tactually, how big our fingers are to touch a device, and most importantly, how much information we can process at the same time. We have so little and limited attention, that most technologies are too obtrusive. When we are driving, a text message or notification is very annoying. That's because our first level attention is on the street (hopefully always), second level is on the dashboard and navigation, and everything else is third. Prioritizing the attention demand in technology is crucial to HCI.
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