According to some subjects and some nifty eye tracking an F pattern seems to emerge. So why the F pattern? Is it because of web designers like to stick relevant information in a F, visual training that started prior to computer usage, or a subconscious instinct for placing and spotting the information we desire?

In our new eyetracking study, we recorded how 232 users looked at thousands of Web pages. We found that users’ main reading behavior was fairly consistent across many different sites and tasks. This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
• Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Scott, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.