May we have your attention, please? 13 Jun 2008

BusinessWeek has a great little article on "attentional user interfaces" - an emerging sub-branch of computer science that seeks to find ways of helping computer users minimise distractions. Why is this necessary? The authors explain it thusly:

"The average knowledge worker has the attention span of a sparrow. Roughly once every three minutes, typical cubicle dwellers set aside whatever they're doing and start something else--anything else. It could be answering the phone, checking e-mail, responding to an instant message, clicking over to YouTube, or posting something amusing on Facebook. Constant interruptions are the Achilles' heel of the information economy in the U.S. These distractions consume as much as 28% of the average U.S. worker's day, including recovery time, and sap productivity to the tune of $650 billion a year."