New TOCHI paper: "The Digital Attention Heuristics: Supporting the User's Attention by Design"
Our paper “The Digital Attention Heuristics: Supporting the User’s Attention by Design” has been published in the prestigious ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI)!
The research, led by myself and Luigi De Russis from Politecnico di Torino, in collaboration with Kai Lukoff from Santa Clara University, introduces a set of eight design heuristics aimed at preserving user attention and fostering digital wellbeing.
The paper addresses the growing concern around “attention-capture” designs employed by tech companies, which often exploit users’ psychological vulnerabilities to maximize engagement. Examples of these attention-capture designs include the infinitely scrollable newsfeed of Instagram or the autoplay of the next video on YouTube. Unlike traditional digital wellbeing interventions that place the burden of digital self-control on users, this research shifts the focus to designers, offering actionable heuristics to create interfaces that respect users’ attention and time by default.
The eight heuristics are grounded in Self-Determination Theory, which emphasizes the three core psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. They provide designers with a robust framework for crafting user interfaces that prioritize users’ digital wellbeing as a top design goal.
Beyond designing new interfaces, having a set of digital attention heuristics may also serve as a valuable tool for designers to critically evaluate existing interfaces and improve them. By shifting the focus from user responsibility to design responsibility, our work has the potential to shape industry practices, inform policy discussions, and convince tech companies to prioritize user wellbeing over engagement metrics.