English speakers read from left to right. Hebrew and Arabic text runs from right to left. Japanese characters flow down the page. But how do we look at the homepage of an online news site? We flit, according to an article by the new media commentator Steve Outing. According to eyetracking research among 46 people in San Francisco, the path of vision starts around the top left, moves down, then left, up, diagonally downwards, across to the right, way back over to the left ... If you're losing me, Poynter Online has reproduced the diagram.
More interestingly - for Guardian Unlimited's designers, at least - what happens if you superimpose the eyetracking diagram onto our homepage right now?
No comments:
Post a Comment