Re: distraction: bane or content?

May be in a perfect world.
I am not a great expert on ADD, but from the contact I have had I can not
imagine these techniques or assumptions being overly useful.

Please forgive me if I try to explain the point with a separate, also
possibly neurological based example. I once heard someone giving to a person
who was severely depressed "good advice" of "try harder to help your self".
The nature of depression is that the  sufferer has given up hope, has no
energy ....... the worse you suffer
from depression the less likely you are to be able to help your self - At
least in the short term. If you suspect someone is depressed you have to act
for them. Something similar happens with ADD. Having been
distracted the user can not say "Oh I am being distracted let me tern off
the distraction". They can however, say that before they begin the task. So
they can tern of Java scripts before they are distracted. But as they do not
know they are going to get crawling ants, and there is a lot of stuff that
is useful to them in JS, will they do that?

Further I have never seen anyone one resent the things that are affecting
their attention.
It is perhaps like a gambler to resent a casino, and therefore stop
frequenting it.

Yours,
L
-----Original Message-----
From: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
To: WAI <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
Date: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 4:58 PM
Subject: distraction: bane or content?


>Many of the things we enjoy in life: jokes, chocolate, etc., operate by
>injecting a subliminal amount of pain or trouble.  For most people, the
>attention-getting devices used in Ads or to provide stimulation on websites
>act
>at this tolerable level.  They tickle your attention circuits, but don't
>kidnap
>your train of thought.
>
>On the other hand, not all people are 'most people.'  Some people have a
lower
>threshold for distraction than others.  And this condition can be a
disability
>if they can't manage the quiescence vs. distraction level in their
>environments.  Crossing Times Square one can't always manage this.  What is
>done in private between a consenting person and their computer should be
more
>manageable than that.
>
>It would appear that the User Agent guidelines will call for User Agents to
>give users override control to still squirmy pages.  So the content
guideline
>in this area might be something like the guidelines about color.  "Do not
rely
>on motion alone to draw attention to a featured element."
>
>If, for a given individual, the advertising is so distracting that the
content
>the user sought is blocked from access, the advertising will be
>counter-productive.  The user will hate the page and the advertiser by
>association.  This is not what the advertiser wants.  The advertiser's
>interest
>in the animation device is predicated on the premise that this level of
motion
>will strike the right balance in the user's attention-paying profile.
>
>We need a device-independent statement of the balance of attention between
>what
>the user wants to notice and what the sponsor wants the user to notice.
This
>balance of attention getting is one of the content characteristics that
needs
>to transform gracefully as we morph the content into different forms for
>different interaction spaces and users.  Still-frame presentation is one of
>the
>media morphs.  Is your content prepared to be effective in this channel?
>
>Al
>
>At 01:00 PM 2001-03-06 +0200, Lisa Seeman wrote:
>>
>>--Hi, I have started looking through the minutes, and I would like to
>>explain the intent of 2.2.
>>>
>>People have complain/ commented to me that they have trouble reading and
>>concentrating on a site were there are animations and distractions. Theses
>>comments are of course form people with ADD/ADHD. The problem
>>is>concentrating or following and not interaction.
>>
>> The wording has been carefully chosen - "minimize" and not "do not use"
so
>>that you can have alert boxes or other necessary distractions.
>>
>>However imagine an ADHD high school student trying to research a complex
>>topic when there are ants crawling across the screen. Every time the ants
>>come in his field of vision, he will forget what he is doing and have to
>>start again. The designer may think that this will help make the site
appeal
>>to teenagers. But in reality many students will have to take medication
>>before using it. An extreme example, but many animations have a similar
>>effect.
>>
>>Defiantly, at least, priority three.
>>
>>
>>lisa
>>>2.2 Minimize content that interferes with the user's ability to
>>>>concentrate.
>>>> * Daniel - why not in guideline 3?
>>>> * Kynn: Daniel didn't like where we split hairs
>>>> * Kynn rewrite to make it fit better with guideline 2
>>>> * WC: already covered?
>>>> * Kynn: change concentrate to interact? The user's ability to
>>>>do what the user is doing.
>>>> * Aaron: delete this?
>>>> * CS: I like the idea of deleting this. Point of an ad is to
>>>>distract
>>>> * Kynn: there are times when it's important to distract the
>>>>user (alerts)
>>>> * Action Item Kynn: work on this
>>>> * Action Item CS: give feedback
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 13:46:37 UTC