A good design should be effortless for the user to use, they shouldn’t have to think how to use it. So what makes us think when using a digital design?
If something isn’t straight forward what it is, it will cause confusion and make us think, this could be content that we can interact with but it isn’t straight forward that we can do that as a user, or words that will leave us clueless of what it means (e.g. Jargon).
When making a digital product, a lot of things are taken into consideration, how we read, how we follow text, and how content helps guiding the user.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Q-B6K11LEWt2_YiPq6BeYTJS-MAni9XDSqcGDlyFKIA8e9F9a8D-LRxOUFQDNWyFVSsOLHCyDxTooqfVs5KFbxd3b0eZcot1Y3Jo-6_T0TjlPl6sh08N_AEB8ZAoaJPOQvBrdNQKkLE0eL1dsPJlZ0T-15bB2KpdL0kWuhoNV5ILgpuHkQYChDDEaun-FQ
When making a website with a lot of content, a news website for example, there is a lot of text involved, the pattern people read in is called the F pattern. There is also an eye tracking movement called the Z pattern. The difference between the F pattern and the Z pattern is that with the F pattern, which has found by the Nielsen Norman Group.
The F pattern is, called the F pattern because of how people read in the western would, you would start read from Left to right, and then move down slightly to read left to right again, but at the later stage the user wouldnt be as focused and would skim through the page and not focus on every word. It is however important to note that the F pattern don’t usually follow the traditional F in many cases, which can be seen on how certain landing pages are buildt. Here is an example using Fleetmatic’s landing page.
[F pattern, Image taken from https://99designs.co.uk/blog/tips/visual-hierarchy-landing-page-designs/](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Pg_9mJpzcu_wxKL0hvjzoRotP79wdCvzaEdI7uTV8nHRxV7KNc0761jHtLc0A_ZKd7ARf0VJIKz_kypq9AyZT0RCIksaSe6X280o53kVwud7iN6qEVG6lGFtRiUxxGZDhtdKi9_ic8St2mqrozB9b5MNh1FvSm1SqvZLH_rzeE1pVRXND8DvtOB8_RpxSA)
F pattern, Image taken from https://99designs.co.uk/blog/tips/visual-hierarchy-landing-page-designs/
The Z pattern on the other hand, is more common on pages where the content is less dense.