EYE ON DESIG N #05: DISTRACTION
Dearest Reader, If we could have your attention, just for one second, we’d like to ask you to take a breath, quiet your mind, and note what first pops into your head when you hear the word “distraction.” Most of our initial reactions (unsurprisingly) involved tech nology: We’re distracted by screens, social media, and accidental internet k-holes. We’re interrupted by ads we don’t want to see, deluged by articles to read, and pulled away by the constant pinging of push notifications, status updates, and unread emails. This is where we started for the Distraction issue1, but like the beginning of every time-swallowing, path-splintering rabbit hole, it’s not where we ended up.
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1_Liz procrastinated prepping for pitch meetings by making her kitchen (almost) sparkling clean.
One of the darker sides of distraction is undoubtedly how companies profit from it. When our attention is commodified, designing new ways to divert and capture it is lucrative business. No one does this better than porn sites2, and in one of our main features we explore how they pioneered live chat, video streaming, credit card processing, pop-ups, web promos, and other UI elements we now consider commonplace on the G-rated web, too.
2_Madeleine procrastinated writing her piece by going through every single advert on her Instagram feed and reporting it as offensive. This frenzied, frenetic mode of absorbing information is also reflected in new styles of design. As one of the educators who participated in our roundtable discussion about Instagram and design school3 put it, “You see this collaging and appropriation of styles, and mashup of visual styles together, because that’s how we consume content now.” Add to that a dark sense of humor, a reverence for ’90s rave graphics,
3_Meg procrastinated leading the roundtable discussion by editing everyone elseʼs stories instead of working on her own.
