Preview: The Focus Filter

London – The Future Laboratory introduces The Focus Filter, one of three macrotrends that we present today.

• The average US adult consumed more than 10 hours of media each day in 2016, according to Nielsen
• The Focus Filter examines the rise of the attention economy and how consumers’ inability to focus has shaped how they engage with brands

Resource scarcity over the past 200 years has changed in focus from land to labour to knowledge, and now, with the prevalence of the internet, to attention. ‘Attention is a resource – a person has only so much of it,’ writes Matthew Crawford in his book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.

In our film on The Focus Filter we examine the disease of distraction, why advertisers need to move beyond clicks and why technology may be the cure as well as the cause.

Alongside LS:N Global visual researcher Jessica Smith, we talk to UK type director at Monotype Nadine Chahine on the importance of designing for quick glances, ChromeYoga founder Nina Ryner on the importance of wellness to focus, managing director of Wieden + Kennedy Neil Christie on advertisers’ solutions to the attention economy and Rosemary Reed and Sophie Morris of Infinite 360VR Productions on why virtual reality could be the ultimate tool for focus.