All about the "F"

Jacob Nielsen has released information from their eyetracking study, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Alertbox).

My initial reaction was a knee-jerk "well, duh." Part of this is seeing similar results from other eye tracking studies, but it may be me trusting in assumptions about how people scan pages.

Seeing "common sense" assumptions reinforced by research tends to bring the "well duh" reaction, but the results are important. The evidence makes sure we're not blindly following plausible or pleasing assumptions... the trick is making sure that our studies are designed to challenge our assumptions.Which isn't a comment on the Nielsen study but a general one. I'm assuming they've designed objectively.