The world has changed due to several technological advances, especially the communication technologies.
The way interfaces are designed, it is easy for the boundaries between the different types of media to get blurred.
If we categorize all possible media that intends to deliver a message to the recipient, they can be categorized into high attention requirement medium and low attention requirement medium. Think about this for a minute. There are platforms so designed that they ask the user to pledge a high or low amount of their attention. For example email applications require high attention from the users, hence the density of information, structure, and formalities. Contrast the email applications with instant messaging applications. The term instant message inherently carries the assumption that the user is not required to pay more of his precious attention. Just a glimpse. Nothing more. But urgent.
The recipients need to ask themselves why they use one medium over the other. The major reason is where our sender is located. Because that decides from which medium we can expect to receive the anticipated message.
All of us are recipients as well as senders. We need to make this choice every day when we choose to write an email or an instant message, or perhaps choose a publication medium such as YouTube or Instagram or Twitter. The clarity about the attention requirement mixed with time horizon (urgent or normal) provides us a good judgement about which medium we should use. The recipients’ location is little important.
The reason behind requirement of this consciousness of choice is clear: it affects how readily the recipient will grasp our message and if required, act on it. It is not the only reason though. With the increasing instant messaging culture, the boundary between professional and personal time are getting blurred. In such a scenario, as a sender and recipient of communication pieces, we have a responsibility to let people relish their leisure time. The so-called leisure time is indeed not a leisure time for a typical knowledge worker because the mind is never switched off.
We have a responsibility to be conscious about how our choice of medium makes people feel about our intended message and also feels about their boundaries. Convenience of a medium for us should not be the sole factor behind our choice of a medium.