Minimalist Design on Social Networking Sites : Understanding Perception of Content on Social Networking Sites in Regards to Attention and Memorability

Abstract: Social Networking Sites have taken the world by storm with an aggressively growing market. People are spending more and more time with ever more alluring algorithms to keep a high interest for increased profit margins and revenue. However, this brings forth societal issues regarding attention span. Herbert. A. Simons (1971) theorized that as people gain information, it is in exchange for attention in an attention economy.With these uprising issues, we set out to discover if there were ways to alleviate the attention required to understand the content. In design, minimalism as a design concept helps to solve these issues by communicating as effectively as possible and skipping "the small talk." Further, the massive growth SNS has experienced in the 2010s leaves a market opportunity to streamline advertisements to communicate with its audience more effectively.The research set out to answer two questions: “How do end-users perceive minimalistic design principles to affect memorability in SNS advertisements?” and “How do end-users perceive minimalistic design principles to affect the attention required to understand an advertisement on SNSs?” We constructed interviews based on previous research and conducted eight interviews. The interviews were then thematically analyzed, where four significant themes occurred. "Positive Perception of Attention Required", "Positive Perception of Effects on Memorability", "Influential Individual Content Creators" and “Effects on Minimalism by Context”. The findings revealed a positive perception of how minimalistic design principles affected the attention required to understand the content. Likewise, it was found that people had similar perceptions of the effects on memorability. Further, it was revealed that a majority believe individual content creators can alleviate societal issues regarding attention.