INTERACTION DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR INTERACTIVE ...

more visually pleasing, but can help to orient users and provide better structure to the
application.
4.1.4 Viewing Patterns
Effective page design maps a viewer’s route through information with visual cues.
Our left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading culture influences how viewers perceive a screen
in terms of what they look at first and subsequent eye movements. For example, as
illustrated by Figure 4.1, when viewing Web pages on a computer monitor, viewers’ eye
movements begin in the upper left-hand corner and gradually move to the lower- and
upper-right hand corner of the screen; as illustrated by Figure 4.1, this typical page-
scanning pattern form a “Z” shape (Ruel & Outing, 2004; Sevilla, 2002).
Similarly, research indicates that viewers scan television screens from the upper
left-hand corner down to the lower right-hand side. Due to reading habits, this behavior is
stronger with text heavy iTV applications than with conventional broadcast television
(British Broadcasting Corporation, 2002). Figure 4.2 depicts the basic layout of a
standard BBC interactive application interface; the arrow indicates how the page directs
the viewer’s eye.
Figure 4.1 Typical Page Scanning “Z” Pattern
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