A Strategy for Ethical Design in the Attention Economy

Editor’s note: Samvith Srinivas is a speaker at the 2018 IA Summit this week in Chicago, Illinois. This article is based on his talk. There is still time to register and save with discount code uxbooth. The cumulative effect of digital products created today have unintended consequences around the world. In South Korea, the government has set up internet addiction rehab centers, India reportedly has the highest number of selfie deaths in the world, and, in 2015, 3,477 people died due to distractions from handheld devices in the US alone. Research shows that our cell phones are distracting us in more ways than one.
Notifications on cell phones negatively affect task performance on complex tasks. The mere presence of a cell phone is shown to distract from task performance. These are the kind of tasks (e.g., create a wireframe, write an email) that most people do as part of our daily lives. These distractions are having negative effects on our health and happiness. In order to make up fo..