September 08, 2004

I Track, You Track, We All Track for Eyetracking

A new study from the Poynter Institute is out, and this article provides some reviews and critiques of the findings. Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool are among the "home page umpires." The interactive 'heatmaps' are pretty neat if you've never seen eyetracking data.

Poynter Online - When It Comes to Homepages, It is Polite to Stare

"Eyetrack researchers showed 46 people a variety of mock news websites and followed their eyes as they moved along the pages. Here's what the research found."

See Also:
- Findings of Eyetrack III research from The Poynter Institute

September 07, 2004

New Use of Purple is Critical

After reading this story I'm considering printing all reports from usability test findings or expert reviews in purple. Of course now I just have to figure out which exact shade of violet conveys the most friendly, non-critical tone. If only I'd learned earlier that it's how you color your words rather than how you phrase them that really matters...I could have saved so much time.

I'm sure if Jakob Nielsen had simply said Flash sucks 99% of the time (in purple), his words would have been better received. Just think of all the frustration that could have been avoided.