100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, 2nd Edition

6 People Scan Screens Based on Past Experience and Expectations

Where do people look first on a screen or page? Where do they look next? It depends partially on what they’re doing and expecting. If they read in a language that moves from left to right, they tend to look at the screen from left to right. If they read from right to left, the opposite is true.

Most people, though, don’t start in the topmost corner. Because people have gotten used to the idea that there are things on screens and pages that are less relevant to the task at hand, such as logos and blank space, they tend to use their central vision to look for meaningful information about 30 percent in from the edge and 30 percent in from the top. In Figure 6.1 the menu bar and the ...