Eye tracking

The skeptical poster maker reading this blog might say, “But this design stuff... well, it’s all a bit... loosey-goosey, innit? “Even you yourself ‘ave said that some of the stuff designers say doesn’t stand up. Like the idea that it’s easier to read lowercase because of the shape of the words.”You want research? Okay, here’s some research on how people read large pages that combine text and images. These are newspapers, not posters, but there’s little doubt that the two are fairly similar reading tasks. Some key findings from older studies:

There are also more recent studies that look more at websites, but these also confirm some of the basic design ideas I’ve blogged about here.

Now, you might kvetch that I’m not linking to peer-reviewed journals, but there are similar things in peer reviewed papers, like those listed in the references below. A quick peek at Holmqvist and Wartenberg (2005) reveals, for example, the number one factor that influences what people look at first and how long they stay looking at something?Large size.So make everything bigger, blast you!It probably is the case that private companies are doing a lot of reports that are maybe not making it into the traditional academic literature. A lot of this kind of research seems to be in conference proceedings, which I understand is more traditional method of publication for engineering and the like.Lots of interesting reading on what makes something readable and memorable!Related papersChu S, Paul N, Ruel L. 2009. Using eye tracking technology to examine the effectiveness of design elements on news websites. Information Design Journal 17(1): 31-43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/idj.17.1.04chuHolmqvist K, Wartenberg C. 2005. The role of local design factors for newspaper reading behaviour – an eye-tracking perspective. Lund University Cognitive Studies 127: 1-21. http://www.lucs.lu.se/LUCS/127/LUCS.127.pdfHat tip to Ben Goldacre.