Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Maintaining Concentration to Achieve Task Completion (06 Nov 2005) The varying rhythms of life include times of solitary reflection in natural settings, relaxation while listening to music with friends, and casual conversation with family. Sometimes the rhythms shift to purposeful action to achieve meaningful personal or professional goals within strict time limits. In these times, modern information and communication technologies can be remarkable amplifiers of human capabilities. Users who maintain their concentration can move smoothly along the path to goal attainment. When they do so, they can feel mastery of the interface, satisfaction in completion of their tasks, and responsibility for the outcomes. Unfortunately some interface experiences produce annoying frustrations that distract users’ attention. These frustrations can lead to poorer workplace performance, lower self-esteem, and stressful relationships with colleagues. When users are working towards a meaningful goal within fixed time limits, distractions and interruptions can severely undermine progress, increase frustration, and raise error rates. Perceived anxiety and physiological measures of blood pressure, heart rate, masseter muscle tension, and psychogalvanic skin response have all been used to demonstrate that computer use can be debilitating. Moreover, frustrated and fatigued users may make poor decisions that could result in loss of data, damage to equipment, or loss of life in systems such as air-traffic control, military, and medical care. While there is a large literature on maintaining situation awareness in life-critical systems designed for professionals, little work has been done on maintaining concentration in business-oriented tasks such as writing documents, preparing spreadsheets, and managing databases. There is also little guidance available for designers of Internet and World Wide Web applications as they enable users to manage email, find information, and make shopping decisions. A clearer understanding of how interface designs enable users to maintain concentration and complete tasks, while avoiding frustration would be helpful. We hope to raise awareness, promote research, and encourage designers to place greater emphasis on enabling users to concentrate on their tasks in the face of tempting distractions and unwanted interruptions. Article URL: http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2005-29/2005-29.pdf Read 71 more articles from University Of Maryland sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Putting Perfect Participants in Every Session          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy