Distributed attention, as opposed to the focused attention of reading and writing, is a type of scanning and wide pattern seeking, most familiar when we look at a painting, watch a movie, search the web or explore a database. Imagine an interface as the scene of a movie.

In classical film narratives, mise en scene works to synchronize with plot development. The set details might mirror the psychology of a character, for example.

But a narrative film’s mise en scene, the meaningful distribution of visual
details, is always threatening to distract from the more “important” and hierarchical
details of plot and narrative momentum. Image has a power to spill over
any kind contained meaning.

In non-classical forms of cinema, a tension or contrast builds between the visible details distributed on the screen and the plot.

Maybe the details begin to a tell a different story than the one the characters are pretending to be involved in. Or the mise en scene introduces many simultaneous narratives that compete for attention. Similarly, page layout or mise en page, can be embedded with disparate, competing information or focus attention on an hierarchy. Interface design, like production design in movies, is an art to control the way attention flows through and around elements.