Application of a simple visual attention model to the communication overload problem

Abstract

The network organization model described several years ago by Lenge [2] has, to a large extent, become a reality. Furthermore the low cost of communication and the convergence/interoperability of devices and networks increasing connections among people and providing a sense of real-time awareness.. Not surprisingly, the time dedicated to our communication has increased considerably. The main goal of this paper is to present a simple mechanism based on an attention model able to select from a list of received items (emails, blog/community’s feeds, IM) the most salient ones for a limited attention user. This attention model is inspired by visual attention model of J.M Wolfe [21] reflecting a biological behavior where visual signals are changed in communication stimuli for our concern. Like this visual attention model our model has two forms of preattentive guidance. Bottom-up guidance directs attention toward signal whose features differ from their neighbors (reputation, solicitation scarcity, audience focus, etc..). Top-down guidance directs attention toward signals that have target features (current user’s interests represented in an intention profile).