Google Eye-Tracking Shows “Golden Triangle” Rule Holds Up Even With Images
All of us who design web pages are constantly making educated guesses about where our users’ eyes travel on the page. We give visual cues with design elements to try to lure people’s eyes to certain areas of the screen. Ideally we’d all run our pages through a round of thorough user testing, complete with eye tracking, before publishing anything, but that’s often not realistic.
Last week Google released results from a recent eye tracking study. If we can’t do the studies ourselves, at least we can follow other studies and glean ideas for the best approach.
According to Google’s blog:
Our User Experience Research team has found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously. To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds.
The most interesting finding to me is that people tend to scan results in order, mostly ignoring visual cues. I had always believed the “golden triangle” rule that says users scan the top left of search results, as the image on the left below shows. But I always assumed that this rule broke down when non-textual elements were present.
As part of the test, Google asked users to choose a result for “how to tie a tie” (image on the right below). The eye tracking showed that users’ eyes still moved from top left down. They scanned the indented text links before they glanced down at the big image of a tie.
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The article on Google’s blog shows a real-time example of users scanning that search results page. Granted, this is only one study, but it’s worth thinking about the next time you design a results page of any kind.
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A very interesting article. I’m wondering how often web designers use eye tracking technology to do their work.
I dug through Google and tried to find a good answer to your question about how many web designers are using eye tracking. I couldn’t find any statistic. I did, however, see a brewing debate about how much weight we as usability professionals should put on eye tracking. People say so many factors need to be taken into account when you’re interpreting where people are looking.