Poster presentation at UXPA2019 with Chris Nicholas and Ken Brownfield from Asymmetrical Labs and Kath Straub from usability.org. Smartphones changed everything. Where early mobile phones were used to make calls, smartphones have morphed the mobile device experience into a path to everything online, from personal/group messaging to email, social apps, web-browsing, shopping, games, and once in a while, a phone call. But, as the Swiss army knife of the digital age, smartphones also represent a perfect storm of distraction. These everpresent distractions can undermine task completion or (from the business perspective) conversion. Desktop experiences, with transient alerts and browsers with 20+ tabs are no less distracting. This presentation describes the economic consequences of incessant interruption on online return visit and purchase behavior. We present data suggesting that an old cognitive technique (typographic “chunking”) can mitigate the effects of disruption by reducing the cognitive load associated with reading and encoding content. New data suggests that chunking may be particularly effective for maintaining engagement across distractions or sessions. That is, enhancing consumer encoding, retention, and comprehension may help a brand message “stick” across interruptions. By the end of this presentation, you still understand how the shift from the information economy to the attention economy has created new challenges for engagement, and how to think about and facilitate engagement over time so as to improve content retention and, ultimately, increase conversion

1. Cite as (APA): Nicholas, C., Brownfield, K. and Straub, K. (2019, June) Grabbing (and keeping! Your users’ attention in the age of interruption.
How the attention economy has changed the rules of engagement. User Experience Professionals Association International. Scottsdale, AZ.