Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Science of Interruption

A good article on this very different field of psychology that studies attention deficit problems in users.

"Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is.... Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself. Our software tools were essentially designed to compete with one another for our attention, like needy toddlers."

The Complete Article

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