[Sigia-l] What the eye sees....

[Andrew Boyd]

Hi Adrian,

the top-to-bottom flow is important, as is the left-to-right flow.

Visual hierarchy is more important - bigger things should be more 
important, because the viewer will guess that the bigger stuff is more 
important.

Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" is a good introduction to visual 
hierarchy. There are dozens of other books that mention it, but most 
aren't as easy to read. There is also lots of that lovely research stuff 
about on eye-tracking analysis to prove visual hierarchy, 
above-the-fold, and scannability. The Krug book was a great one to hand 
to a project manager to convince them that planned pages work 
better/stronger/faster.

I'm really tired and busy at the moment so please forgive a momentary 
lack of fancy three-dollar buzzwords :)

Cheers, Andrew

Adrian Price wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I've recently had some discussions about where on a web page things
>should be placed. That is, if some elements are more important than
>others, how should one draw attention to them.  The common wisdom seems
>to be that attention starts at the "top" and works "downwards". I would
>say that it depends on the shape of the page and how the eye perceives
>the page/screen. I.e. that the interplay of all elements on the
>page/screen influence where the eye focuses first and last. 
>
>If so, this can only be tested empirically, but until then are there
>any heuristics which can guide the placing of elements on a web page? 
>
>Regards
>Adrian
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Andrew Boyd 
Business Development Manager
Daily Basis P/L
Phone 02 6282 9797 or 02 4885 1357
Mobile 0412 641 074
Email andrew at dailybasis.com.au
or andrew_db at bigpond.com
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