What is selective attention and tunnel vision?

Selective attention refers to the process that leads users to focus on particular information rather than all that is present. Users tend to stay focused only on the part of the interface that they think is relevant to their concern at that time.

Tunnel vision refers to when users focus on a particular item and disregard the rest of them. A solution to usability issues associated with tunnel vision is to place related items together.

Example

It is essential to place information thoughtfully so the user does not ignore it. As shown below, tunnel vision strongly impacts the design below. The users ignored the year at the top and read the entire writeup before they found out that the year is 2000.

Moreover, the users read the headline first. However, the headline does not serve a useful purpose as it contains the company name. It is not a good idea to put the company’s name in a headline that is already present on the company’s website, as that is repetitive content.