Most of us are writers, one way or another. We share our thoughts in blogs and ebooks. And you may have noticed that I have been experimenting recently with emphasizing certain parts of my posts, breaking up longer texts in chapters, and playing around with various formats.
I am doing this to test the so-called F-Shaped pattern of reading. This is a description of how people read online. It was first identified in 2006 by the Nielsen Norman Group. They recently published an update, clarifying that:
- Scanning on the web does not always take the shape of an F. There are other common scanning patterns too.
- The F-pattern can be bad for users and businesses.
- Good design can prevent F-shape scanning.
Let’s examine all this in detail, shall we?
What Is The F-Shaped Pattern?
Image: Nielsen Normal Group
As you can see for the heatmap above, people’s eyes focus on certain…
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Many thanks for sharing, Deborah 🙂
My pleasure – its an interesting and helpful study.
That is interesting. I’ve heard of it before, forgot about it, and now need to check my blogs!
I hadn’t seen it related to reading patterns before. I’ve seen this technique used as a means of determining where judges look at a horse during a competition – very telling in my profession.
Great reshare. Just read this at Nicholas’ blog before I landed here, lol 🙂 x
Nicholas has so many great posts, often worth a share.
For sure! I share many of his posts too 🙂