Over the years I have been involved in the design and implementation of various computer applications.
When installing a system we were often asked to make screen changes to highlight certain situations. These included new or additional alerts for tasks that were over due, adding scrolling text about some process already underway or putting in pop ups to remind staff of best practice.
More often than not these requests were declined, because if they were implemented, they would have resulted in a very busy computer screen for the end user. 'Alert Fatigue' would creep in. This would result in sending alerts that would be irrelevant for many, and worse than that, when people get enough of these, the alerts that are actually important would be ignored.
I recently came across some research that seemed to agree with the philosophy of being miserly when it came to adding alerts, scrollers etc to screens. An experiment by Lori Bergen, Tom Grimes and Deborah Potter had college students watch CNN Headline News. Some students watched the regular news, complete with all the on screen extras such as flashing icons, the stock quotes, breaking news and the rolling messages that scroll along the bottom of the screen. Other students watched the same news, but with the extras edited out, they just saw the basic screen.
Students that watched the busier screen with all the alerts and extra text did far worse in recalling facts than those who watched the basic news screen.
The lesson here for the workplace is that we can now have plugins and pop ups for many applications on our desktops or smart phones. We have our Google or Yahoo pulling in the news, weather, stock prices as we read our email. The bottom right hand corner of your PC screen will have pop ups for scanning email, Instant Messaging, Skype activity, Calendar Events.
Like the participants in the experiment, our ability to absorb the key facts of what we are actually doing or looking at on our screens may be affected. If you work in a job where attention to detail and recall of facts are important, then perhaps you should review the desktop or apps on your PC.
Have a look at the alerts and notices that do pop up, consider how important they are. Are they 'clutter' or actually helping you to work more efficiently. If they are on the 'clutter' end of the spectrum, then a spring clean of your apps and desktop icons may be in order.
There is also a lesson here for website design and on line marketing. Flashing ads, visit counters, social media feeds, pop ups asking for surveys are all easy to put on, but if you want people to recall what is on your website, then you may need to cut back on these and be more circumspect about adding new features in the future.
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