Streakers, Strollers, Scholars

We could think about our visitors by demographics: age, gender, religion.

We could sort them by psychographics: lifestyle, political affiliation, values.

But I prefer to plan according to attention span: streakers, strollers, and scholars.

Streakers move fast, not pausing for details. For them, experiences need to communicate at a glance.

Strollers are slower, but moving. They pause for details when they're interested. So they need navigable layers of information.

Scholars need to experience every detail. They try to guess the best way to see everything. So they need logical structure.

Visitors come in all three types — so we should consider them all at once. By the way, a visitor can switch between attention span types while they are with you.

Here’s the thing:
Our experiences work better when they cater to all three types of visitor attention spans: streakers, strollers, and scholars.

Warmly,
Jonathan