http://andrewmccausland.net/designForDiscomfort/attention/index
1. Choose a form of discomfort (choose one of the four forms, and get more specific from there)
Visceral— sensory overload (fast-paced flashing lights and colors, visual obstruction, inability to concentrate)
2. Identify a goal that could be reached through this discomfort
Get participants to think about their attention spans and how they are captured and manipulated by external stimuli. Ideally would like to facilitate dialogue surrounding this topic to span more overarching issues regarding our visual landscape (for example the advertising industry, technology’s effects on our mental abilities).
3. Identify a design approach (must be different than Journey #1) that can utilize your chosen form of discomfort.
A web-based experience (the space which is most susceptible to such discomfort).
4. Prototype a “journey” using that approach, toward the goal, through the chosen form of discomfort.
A web-based experience where users are presented with the objective of reading an essay, but are subsequently confronted with increasing sensory distraction inhibiting their ability to finish it (they wouldn’t have read it in its entirety anyway, right?)
This prototype focuses on testing the following factors:
- User interest/engagement (How far will they get? If not far, why not? Is it boring? Does it get too uncomfortable too quickly?)
- Does the user understand the purpose of the experience?
- Did the user find the experience worthwhile/rewarding? Does it actually facilitate dialogue/thought as per my design goals, or in any other way?
Based on the results for these research points, I’d like to move on to figuring out what contexts the experience(s) should be presented in (how will users stumble upon this?) then build more complex web-based experiences utilizing similar subtle, encroaching a/v annoyances.