How Do Designers Organize Content To Follow Natural Eye Movement Patterns?

It’s through assigning priority to the information they want to convey. Designers effectively present content or information by following a visual hierarchy. They try to organize their content so to present the content with the highest priority first. This, in turn, will be the first item that will grab the eye’s attention, as the Interaction Design Organization details: 

“Hierarchy” is simply a nicer way of saying organized from most to least important. We also use “hierarchy” to show relationships (where relationships exist) between content blocks.

There are common patterns for hierarchy both on the printed page and for the digital page. These patterns are based on the movements that our eyes tend to make when presented with a fresh page. English, for example, is read from left to right. English readers have a set scanning pattern when facing a page of text. Arabic readers have a different pattern. Why? It’s because Arabic is read from right to left.

It’s important to understand how your audience processes information before adopting a hierarchy pattern. 

Check out the full piece here.

image via The Interaction Design Organization