Blog Post
AndrewCrotty
6 years agoCommunity Member
It's refreshing to read an article that addresses the attention span myth (humans and goldfish alike). I have seen too many presentations that start with a 'shocking' statistics slide on the decline of human attention. I have never subscribed to this belief. This was a very useful and well written article that offers important insight into what is really going on. I realised at the end I actually own Julies book but for shame, I have left it gathering dust on my desk, I better dust it off and catch up.
- MattMcGuire-2806 years agoCommunity MemberI agree with you Andrew. That 8-second attention span is a ridiculous myth that gets perpetuated all the time and on it's face is patently absurd. When I hear a presenter throw that out (or some other demonstrably false statistic), I tune out the remainder of the presentation. I don't have much of an attention span for shocking, made up statistics.
- IanBell-394900f6 years agoCommunity MemberI think there is no doubt the 8-second attention span is a myth but I think it is stated to keep developers cognisant of the fact that if the content is not interesting, it probably takes people 8-seconds to realize this and tune out.
We live in a world (me included) where, if content is not interesting and relevant, we move on to find something that is.- FelixFranke5 years agoCommunity Member"Cognisant" is a great word - my new word for today. No irony, I do like it.
I also agree that if you don't catch the viewer's ( learner's) attention right away you are on a lost cause. Think of designing the ads which interrupt YouTube videos. How do you get the viewer NOT to click it away?