Jakob Nielsen’s post on banner blindness includes an interesting study on how people read Web pages. Researchers tracked people’s eye movements as they visited sites online and determined that we look at Websites in an “F” pattern. Writing for business owners and Web designers, Nielsen concludes,

• 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.

Web users have taught themselves to read this way with remarkable consistency. If teachers want students to read long blocks of text online (for example, an online short story or an essay), we may have to remind them to adjust their reading strategies as they begin.

These studies have implications for the teaching of writing, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.

Posted Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:01:51 and filed under Reading, Information Literacy, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.