Take a moment and look at your browser history. Don’t worry, no one is looking over your shoulder. Are you surprised at how many sites you have visited in the last 20 minutes?

As both a User Experience Architect and an (easily) distracted user, I find myself at the center of a quandary: it often seems like the blue sky scenarios for which we design no longer match our increasingly overstimulated users' browsing habits. As consumers gain access to more and more virtual escapes, any given site is bound to receive less and less user time and attention. When we design for content that doesn’t account for the multitasking nature of a generation, we lose the opportunity to deliver our message.

As the internet’s rules change, we need to update our assumptions about users when setting goals and metrics for a successful interaction. Once we move beyond trying to guide our users to browsing the way we want them, we can begin designing to take advantage of the limited time and attention we actually have.

What you can expect to hear:

This talk will explain not just the way that users interact with our site, but what else is interacting with our users. I plan to provide information on environmental distractors, metrics that matter, and new design patterns.

Learning Objectives:
-Understanding the environmental and digital distractions you are up against
-Identifying the habits of the multitasking user and knowing what distractions are within and beyond your control
-Understand shortcomings in traditional goals such as page views and time on site
-Creating appropriate goals for your site and your users
-Designing to take advantage of a limited attention span