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The Stanford Poynter Project Study
sredding writes: "The Stanford Poynter Project has some interesting conclusions after a study of Internet news readers. 'Two years ago Stanford University and The Poynter Institute researchers began collaborating to learn how frequent Internet news readers went about perusing news online.' It's an interesting read for Web designers." Cool info and interesting statistics, especially the one about how people jump for text first, not pictures. Take that, Mosaic! Lynx forever! ;)
err, no, slashdot works great under lynx. it actually shows the page (the text) as it loads, unlike netscape, which waits until all the 's have been closed. I read /. everyday under lynx, and find it extremely clunky whenever I look at it with Netscape. In fact, I find lynx great for reading news sites, where (as the article says) you go for the text anyway. on overdesigned commercial sites, you usually get 3 or 4 screenfuls of crap at the top (for things like left navigation on graphical browsers), but you learn to skip them *really* quickly, and you don't even give them a bit of attention. lynx is a great timesaver; I'd consider switching over to links (the newer text-mode browser) only if it implemented a lynx-like mode which flattens tables.
OK, here's the Poynter Institute bolting a metal frame onto a browser-user's head and monitoring his every eye motion. Don't you suppose that all that intensive surveillance might just possibly have some small effect on the user's behavior? Like, all alone, without the head gear, what could be more natural than if he might have headed on over to playboy.com to spend a few minutes or even hours grazing among the bitmaps and multimedia.
Now imagine that this same browsing subject has a birdcage studded with electronic doodads bolted around his skull, and a variety of all-too-serious sociologists peering over his shoulder. I'd guess that under those circumstances our lab rat will spend a good deal more time perusing something serious and scholarly like that lighthouse for the investment class the New York Times, or even our own grave and stately slashdot.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Something I've always wondered about, which this doesn't seem to cover, is does the general population use multiple browser windows and move back and forth between them like I imagine most of us do? I've had a LOT of non-techie people ask me how I made a new window when they see me browsing. I guess it's not that easy to figure out on your own (sure seems like it, though). This seems like a pretty relevant browsing-habit question; any guesses?
You know... for a sight claiming that the eye jumps for text first they have an awefully big
picture with an awfully small sidebar of text.
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
Ha!! I told you so. I go to read the articles at playboy.com, not look at the pictures :)
The Poynter Eyetrack study was discussed, with interesting commentary, in May 14 edition of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox.
If you want to skip the huge image and read the article in a larger frame, use this link.
Enjoy life, drink beer.
Lots of money wasted here. Everyone has experienced net lag and knows intuitively that pictures take a long time to load. So we have gotten used to looking for the text first, then looking at the pictures that may actually be loaded by then. If everyone would just use the ALT tags like they're supposed to, I wouldn't ever look at pictures.
Oh well, why can't they waste money in my direction? =-p
Yes, content is king. Content in the sense of *usable information*. But also keep in mind that people love to get things presented in an attractive way. And that also includes graphics. :-)
This said, the study doesn't really make a point against embedding text in a graphical environment. No matter where people look first, the overall impression of a page has a huge influence on wether people come back or not. And the "commercial web" is all about making people come back. That for sure doesn't excuse these glossy macromedia flash company presentation websites that take longer to load than anyone would be ready to wait - but I support a sensible use of graphic elements on websites. Btw...anyone working on a text-only version of "userfriendly"? With ASCII graphics?
The content loads first, and its unusual positioning grabs your eye. I read a paragraph or two, until I headed to the innocuous grey caption -- before I noticed the picture with the cyborg style eye tracker. The TOC doesn't load until clicked, presumably to lead you into the introduction without distractions. Oh, there was a logo up in the corner.
While their results were about news sites, the principles are pretty well demonstrated on there site. Like the site or not, it seems to re-enforce their findings (coincidence? I think not.)
Of course, given a particular browser choice, bandwith, and individual makeup, YMMV.
zaugg