>>The common sense is in the fact that the flashing warning lights and signs are consistently used everywhere for over a hundred years. Then there is a point in their existence.
>>
>>And it just may be that the millions of dollars for the research were spent by the managers trying to prove their own importance... :)
>
>The brute force argument doesn't work. I don't care how much it cost. No matter how it cost, it's still a Hollywood movie - remember Titanic, when the size of the budget was its most important sales pitch?
>
>Googling "million dollar research" gives you 21 million hits. So it's probably not such a big thing at all... anyone can waste money on pointless research, and it happens a lot :).
>
>A simple rule of thumb: if it's far from the reader and you want to get his attention, flash. If it's right in front of his nose and you want to annoy him, flash. If it's a little piece of something in a corner of a screen and you want attenttion, flash it. In any other situation, better don't.
>
>I could have written this for not millions of dolars - just remove the plural here and I'd still be fine.

And right you are.:)

The effectiveness of flashing signals based on the most fundamental behavioral reflex: the orientation reflex. One can just do the quick Google search on "orientation reflex" to come up with this definition, for example: "Orientation reflex is a fundamental change of behaviour, where the eyes, head and body are turned toward an alarming external stimulus." This is involuntary reaction to something that changes appearance near you (moves, increases the size, blinks). Obviously, this is the reason why predators move very slowly towards the prey to make a sudden jump when it's too late for the prey to react and escape.

Don't you just involuntary turn your head when somebody passes by behind you, when you sit in your cubicle? ("What is it?" :) That is where "common sense" is coming from.

Just changing appearance once (like suggested background color change) is not effective enough in critical situation. Your attention may be somewhere else and when you notice the change it may be too late already. That's why the flashing signs used in situation where the response time is critical (aviation for example). Yes, you can go with the flashing warning light and put non-flashing text beside it. But in those critical situations one will lose time moving the sight from the flashing light and refocusing on the text. If the software controls the nuclear reactor, you better flash the sign :)

Another obvious purpose on flashing text signs in real world is that in critical situation the lights can go off and it will not be possible to read the explaining text. And the argument that it's difficult to read the flashing sign is not quite true. The trained pilot, for example, does not *read* the sign, his brain just *recognizes* its appearance, causing faster subconscious reaction.

Sure, the response time may be not that critical for the most of software applications, but one can easily see where the requests for flashing signs come from.

They come from the most important biological reflex, and when somebody tells me that millions of dollars were spent to prove that the fundamental orientation reflex is wrong - I can only laugh.