Busy screens and focus: what research says on distraction

Some screens feel loud before you have read a word. A badge pulses, a mascot waves, six colours compete. Does a busy screen really make focusing harder? The research is thinner than most design advice suggests.

What the evidence says

Irrelevant pictures pulled harder in ADHD, in one small lab study. Seventeen adults with ADHD and 17 controls of similar age and IQ searched for a letter on a screen. On one trial in ten, an irrelevant colourful cartoon character appeared. These pictures slowed the search more for the adults with ADHD than for the controls ¹. When the search itself was made more demanding, the interference fell for the ADHD group as effectively as it did for controls ¹.

Saturation and brightness shape how a colour feels. In a 1994 study using colour chips, saturation and brightness had strong and consistent effects on emotional reactions ². In its regression results, more saturated colours went with higher arousal, and brighter colours with more pleasure and somewhat lower arousal ².

Colour differences may not be equally visible to everyone. A study compared 30 young adults with ADHD and 30 matched adults without it. The women with ADHD were less accurate than controls at telling apart levels of blue and red saturation, though their contrast sensitivity did not differ ³.

Dark text on a light background was easier to read. In an experiment, younger and older adults both did better on a visual acuity test and a proofreading task with dark characters on a light background than with the reverse ⁴.

A picture before a task is not a picture during it. In one experiment, university students improved more on a fine dexterity task after viewing pictures of puppies and kittens than after pictures of adult dogs and cats ⁵. The pictures came first.

What we don’t know

None of these studies tested an app, a phone screen or an ordinary working day. The colour study’s summary does not say who took part ².

No study here measured clutter on an everyday screen.

Only two of the studies involved people with ADHD, and both were small. Whether the other findings hold in ADHD is untested. The colour-discrimination result appeared in women only ³.

Fixes that sound helpful do not always test well. In a study of 12 primary school pupils with dyslexia, a font designed for dyslexia brought no improvement in reading rate or accuracy compared with two common fonts ⁶.

Things to try

No study tested these steps. The findings only point towards them.

• Clear unrelated pictures for one session. Before a stretch of focused work, hide colourful pictures and characters that are not part of the task. The lab study used a letter search, not everyday work ¹.
• Try dark text on a light background for long reading. If you usually read in dark mode, switch for a few days. The experiment did not test days of reading ⁴.
• Do not let colour carry meaning alone. If you colour-code tasks, add a word or a symbol as well. The colour study did not test this ³.