The Online Journalism Review has this piece about website eyetracking research conducted by Jakob Nielsen, which offers pointers on how sites can be best designed based on where users’s eyes gravitate and fixate on web pages. Some of Nielsen’s results are obvious, such as articles should have clear, well-written headlines.
Another less obvious finding is that generic photos that don’t really relate to the content (such as a fork and knife photo that appears on a food review website) are overlooked and can even be obstacles to reading.
But one finding is intriguing, although not suprising: when shown photos of either people or animals, men fixate on, um, private anatomy as well as faces, while women fixate on faces alone. (See photo of George Brett below.)
It’s the animal private part fixation that strikes me as the most intriguing result.
Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.
(Hat tip to Boing Boing.)
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:16 AM|Comments(0)
Blogs We Read
