When people are asked to estimate a passage of time without the aid of clocks, it can sometimes be accurate. But when an engaging task is added, such as a completing puzzle or counting, one's perception of time warps because attention is captivated.
This experiment stems from the idea that “counting” time takes attentional resources, and that you have a limited amount of attentional resources available at any given moment. What would happen if there was something interfering with the counting of time, such as a puzzle to occupy attention?
UX Hypothesis
We believe that captivating attention will alter a person's perception of time. This can be used to combat boredom at low-attention areas, like doctor's offices or waiting rooms.
We will know this is true when we can find a correlation between the degree of error when measuring time when attention is captivated and attention is not captivated.
What is "Time Perception? Time perception is how an individual processes and interprets time. Whether it is an intuitive feeling, or merely looking at a clock, the brain processes the information and gives it a semantic meaning.
The experiment was conducted to explore the differences in how people measured time when they are distracted, and when they were given full attention towards counting time. For this experiment, people were asked to tell how much time had passed during four durations; two short durations that were under a minute, and two longer durations which were closer to five minutes.
So what did we find out? It turns out that people are pretty bad at measuring time in general. When the length of the duration was longer, the magnitude of the errors in estimate increased. When participants were given a Sudoku puzzle, they tended to overestimate the duration that was closer to five minutes.
Real life context:When we pay more attention to watching and thinking about time, we tend to make the duration seem longer than it actually is. Using distractions to captivate attention diverts attention away from time, making the durations seem shorter than they actually are.
A practical application is for places with traditionally long queues (DMV, doctor’s office, a grocery store line) to have puzzles or magazines to actively engage the mind. Knowing this knowledge, you may feel more inclined to download an app or bring a puzzle book next time you anticipate a long queue, because standing there thinking about time makes the time feel like it is going by incredibly slow.
UX Skills used:
- Preliminary Research: Found out about the previous research and processes to understand what could be expanded on.
- Experimental Design: Created a sound and logical experiment that had relevance.
- Participant Selection: Found and recruited a test population on a strict budget.
- Data analysis: Performed statistical analysis to find meaningful results.
- Presentation: Created and performed several presentations to peers sharing the insights from the experiment.