[Sigia-l] F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

[Paola Kathuria]

alist146 wrote:
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

I'm glad that people run experiments but I fail to see
how this experiment can be generalised outside of its
experimental conditions.

The heat maps all show 'hotter' areas on the left. It seems
reasonable that it would take longer to find the start of the
compared to time to read the last word on a line. And a page
that's split into paragraphs (including search results) will
cause vertical gaps in eye-tracking. Both these factors will
inevitably combine to produce an F pattern ("if you squint").

I'd be interested to see eyetracking results from the
following conditions and, more importantly, where subjects
are actually *motivated* to read or interact with the content
(other than being paid for their time).

- content with no paragraph break and no sub-headings
- content with sub-headings but no paragraph breaks otherwise
- content with sub-headings and paragraph breaks
- content with pull-quotes

(One would also need to control for position of navigation
and ads. Doesn't anyone do web research where they create
sites for testing rather than compare existing sites which
differ in a huge number of factors, making any comparison
meaningless?)

Anyway, this will probably confirm what Nielsen has already
said in the past: people don't read everything and that
they'll first skim a page (by picking out prominent text such
as bold text and bright links).

Otherwise, I think that the F pattern is just an artefact of
normal eye movements during reading of content with paragraph
breaks.


Paola