Attention and Notification Design
Using visual, auditory, and spatial cues in a disciplined budget so the machine can grab an operator's attention exactly when — and only when — it should.
Attention is a scarce, protected resource
Every notification spends operator attention, and attention does not refill on demand. If the interface interrupts too often it trains the operator to tune it out (the alarm-fatigue failure mode); too rarely and it misses the moment to re-engage. Kronos L6 treats attention as a budget and spends it deliberately, matching the intrusiveness of a cue to the urgency and confidence of what triggered it.
A graded cue hierarchy
| Urgency | Cue |
|---|---|
| Ambient / informational | passive change on the shared picture, no interrupt |
| Notable | peripheral highlight; enters the triage stream |
| Action needed soon | distinct tone + persistent card with countdown |
| Immediate action | strong multi-modal cue reserved for this level only |
The strongest cues are reserved and rare, so that when they fire operators respond reflexively instead of second-guessing. Auditory cues are distinct and few — a small vocabulary of sounds an operator can identify without looking — because a room full of similar beeps conveys nothing. Spatial cues matter too: an urgent item is drawn where the responsible operator is already looking, not stranded on a peripheral screen.
Confidence modulates intrusiveness
A high-confidence, high-consequence detection earns a strong interrupt; a low-confidence one is surfaced without hijacking the operator, because a strong interrupt on a shaky detection is how trust erodes. This links notification strength directly to the model's own uncertainty and provenance — the same signals shown in uncertainty visualization. When a model is out of distribution, its notifications are marked as such so the operator weights them appropriately.
The notification budget is validated in the simulator against scripted breeder disruptions and burner excursions, tuning cue thresholds so operators are re-engaged before events without being worn down between them. See cognitive load and flood suppression.