🌬️ Cognitive Drift:
When your mind naturally wanders or loses focus.
People will typically experience Cognitive Drift if more than one second elapses between interacting with technology, and seeing something change on screen.
It's thought that if 10 seconds pass, that user's mind is elsewhere entirely.
(Theorised by Stephen J. Dubner, and Steven Levitt).
✅ Conversion rates
They may lose interest entirely.
✅ Input quality
Due to a lack of interest, they may still complete the process, but not bother entering full (or accurate) information.
e.g., they may not have bothered selecting all of their 'interested topics', and just picked one.
✅ Attention & interest
✅ Effort & motivation
In general, you don't want your users waiting around doing nothing.
This is partially why you'll see sites do the following:
Lazy loading images (i.e., reminding people that something is coming).
Hover over states (so things feel interactive).
Showing spinners (i.e., the Mac beach ball, to say that something is broken, but that you should wait).
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