Stylegala news / April 2006 / F-shaped pattern for reading web content
F-shaped pattern for reading web content
A recent eyetracking study conducted by Jakob Nielsen reveals a recurring . I've seen similar results before, but this might be the most practical data Jakob's put out there in some time.
18 apr at 16:45 by Cameron
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An interesting point-of-view from Etre:
“…it seems like Nielsen is trying to pass off discovery of the ‘F’ shape as his own, when in fact, this pattern was first noted by Enquiro in a report published last year about Google’s ‘Golden Triangle’…”
“…Suggesting that F-shaped scanning is [an] innate [human behaviour] seems to push a very specific agenda - an agenda that sees users’ behaviour (and ultimately usability gurus like Nielsen) driving design. Yet it seems to me that, in this particular instance, it is design that is driving users’ behaviour.”
from: http://www.etre.com/blog/2006/04/f_me/
I also think it's up to the designers to lead the eye of the visitors. I'm not going to adjust my designs in the future to follow the F-pattern, yet for advertizing purposes I think this can be usefull.
It certainly brings to light and re-reminds us of the importance of first impressions, see more here on this: http://www.farstyle.com/web_design/where_do_users_look/
some more criteria that makes it far more complex:
the maximum horizontal length for readibility, the read direction (left to right: western languages, right to left: eastern languages), letter-spacing, line-height
columnar layout, stretched lay-out, screen resolution, color blindness??, tabular data etcetera
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