Adaptation of visual attention: Effects of information presentation in idea selection processes

Abstract

Idea submissions in innovation contests contain a variety of information as e.g., the idea description, information on its contributor or feedback by the crowd. Raters might perceive and attend to these sources of information differently, which potentially influences the selection of the best ideas. Up to now, however, we know little about the extent to which the visual attention to such information changes during the idea selection process and what impact such changes might have on the outcome of idea selection. The goal of our experiment is to investigate the effect of two idea presentation modes on changes in visual attention to idea attributes, measured with fixations using eye-tracking over time. Preliminary results on a sample of 30 participants show that visual attention to idea attributes decreases rapidly after participants saw the first 8 ideas.