Attracting User Attention to Visual Elements Within Website with the Use of Fitts’s Law and Flickering Effect

Design of applications requires proper management of content, interaction elements and space. In web systems flow of interactions is often based on attention catching components in a form of elements of navigation or advertising content. Distance from central part of interface is affecting user behavior, what can be overcome by scaling size of the objects within the interface according to Fitts’s law. Here we examine the effects of flickering elements with different frequency, direction and distance from central elements of webpage on user attention and habituation reduction. The aim of the study was to examine how to overcome users’ resistance to stimuli based on objects flickering with different frequencies located in different directions and distances. We wanted to check if the higher flicker frequency can compensate the larger distance and increase and user focus depending on whether the element is located nearest or farthest, similarly like objects sizes for Fitts’s law. Results showed that flicker increases the attention to objects with higher distance but has no effect on nearest objects. I was possible to improve total time attracted by distance objects by twenty percent, however the higher performance was observed to nearest objects, no matter what frequency was used for them.