www.useit.com/alertbox/9605a.html
The F pattern
Recent technology has allowed companies to perform eye-tracking studies on the reading
patterns of web users. These tests are usually performed by a company called EyeTracking,
who outfits people with a large helmet of wires and lasers, not unlike the 1950??™s version of
Doc in Back to the Future. The subjects are then instructed to navigate and use a specific
web page, and the contraptions precisely follow their eye movements as they scan information.
The aggregate data is then shown as a heatmap layered over a screenshot of the
page. This ultimately illustrates where users focus their attention, and the patterns in
which they consume content.
This heatmap commonly comes up as a large F-shaped pattern, with the upper-left corner
comprising the densest activity, coupled with a long tail down the left side and two horizontal
tails reaching right, the first at the top of the page (usually where the navigation is)
and another a few inches below (right in the middle of the content). The coolest activity is
in the bottom right corner. These results have captured the attention of the web community
because they present the first empirical evidence of physical reading habits.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242