Designing for GenZ: The impact of short attention span
According to Pew Research Center, GenZ kids are the ones who were born after the year 1997 till 2012. When compared to millennials (1981–1996), who compromise the largest market share in the digital product space and the working class, GenZ immerses much more in the digital space. They are born in the age of mobile and digital media, whereas for millennials it's a mix of both analog and digital experiences.
For a designer, understanding how GenZ behaves and consumes content is very important. They are the ones who simply cannot imagine a life without smartphones or computers. Here are some interesting facts according to Mediakix:
- 85% of Gen Z learns about new products via social media.
- 71% of this generation watches more than three hours of online video daily.
- 8 seconds = Gen Z’s attention span.
One very prominent piece of information is their low attention span. Gen Z facts confirm that fast internet speeds, bringing the world right at their fingertips, along with multiple choices, have resulted in a decline in attention spans. Millennials, with their average attention span of 12 seconds, were considered distracted in the early 2000s. At the same time, Gen Z-ers have a much shorter attention span than millennials.
Impact on Digital Products
The lower attention span has led companies to redefine their products so that they can stand out among the endless competition that exists today. Any product needs to gain attention in less than a second. Realistically, you need to show value on the first use, or you will lose to your competition.
Emerging Trends
Leading social media platforms have developed advertising options for this audience: Vine’s 6-second videos, Snapchat’s 10-second story limit, and YouTube’s 6-second pre-roll ads are a few examples.
One popular and more relatable example is the short video format that almost every app is trying to bring to its platform. TikTok revolutionalized this behavior, and almost every generation became hooked on this. This was followed by Youtube Shorts and Instagram Reels. GenZ love to spend time on these platforms. The below image shows the number of active users on some of these platforms (Source: Livemint).
Not just short videos, but also short news by Inshorts, quick revision by Toppr Stories, and the tweet limit by Twitter are also a few examples.
How do you design for this short attention span?
1. Get rid of clutter
You should provide users with contextual experiences to help them perform critical actions and gather critical information. You should surface usable and useful insights from the data you accumulate about your users.
2. Use visuals over text
Short attention spans often prevent users from reading the text that is in front of them in full. They are more likely to consume information presented to them in a visual format since a visual presentation is more engaging. For kids watching a video or looking at an infographic will be easier to consume than reading a whole book! Similarly, an audiobook or a TED talk would have more listens/views than any book on the same topic.
3. Optimize for content
You should optimize your text for efficient ways of reading, as people tend to scan quickly to find the most important points. Include content that is relevant. Hiding unnecessary data and having a cleaner UI is another step towards minimalism.
4. Optimize the actions
Reduce the number of actions you may require from a user. Prioritize what it is that you ultimately want from your user.
The above article shares some observations around how the short attention span is impacting most of the digital products today. However, it is to be noted that it's not only just for GenZ but the change in behavior is also visible in other generations as well. GenZ would be compromising most of the working class also in the years to come and hence they would play an important role in how digital products are designed!
