Attention Economy
Design Futures/Fiction
The market in which products compete for, and profit from, human attention.
In practice
The attention economy is the system where free products earn by capturing attention and selling it to advertisers, which makes engagement — time, taps, returns — the metric everything is optimised toward. It explains infinite scroll, autoplay and notification spam, and it is the structural reason so much design works against the people using it. Understanding it is the first step to designing against it.
Questions
What is Attention Economy?
The attention economy is an economic model in which human attention is the scarce commodity that products capture and monetise, shaping design toward maximising engagement.
Why do you use Attention Economy?
Because it is the incentive behind most of the design decisions people find manipulative — and you cannot resist an incentive you have not named.
How do you use/apply Attention Economy?
Recognise engagement-maximising patterns, question whose interest a feature serves, prefer business models that align with user value, and measure outcomes people would thank you for.
When do you use Attention Economy?
As a critical frame on any product with advertising or engagement-driven revenue.
Who uses Attention Economy?
Designers, product leaders and ethicists — and anyone deciding what their product optimises for.
