Eyeing the audience

First off, these articles were actually really interesting! More importantly, I feel like I gained some new perspectives on how much impact audience has (or should have) on a site's design. As with almost any media text, there has to be a consideration of audience. However, I think this is especially complex and important in relation to websites because of the many dynamic elements and moving pieces that go into their design.

The articles discussing audience made me realize that audiences are not "monolithic", but are rather diverse. It can be easy and convenient to group an audience into one giant cluster, but it certainly isn't functional and generally won't provide very good results. Recognizing that audiences are fragmented into many small factions, each with different goals and expectations is key to designing a website that works for the users. In class it was mentioned that many web designers just "want to make things look pretty", and that's fine, as long as we are also able to place our preconceived expectations and preferences in the back seat and truly think about how are audience is actually behaving.

Eye-tracking is something that I had never really understood. I'd heard of studies that used eye-tracking, but I was always like "Whaaaat?". I noticed that Jane mentioned that she found herself reading in the F-shape pattern, and I have to admit that I had a similar experience. I scanned across the top and down the left side initially, and then went back and tried to really read the entire piece. It's interesting how much more difficult it feels to carefully read through a website than a paper article. Maybe it's because I'm so accustomed to just looking for a specific piece of information that I need on a website versus meticulously going through it all. I also found it really interesting that the fancy, flashy elements don't always get the attention. I'd always thought that making something look super cool would really drive home that it was important, but apparently that's not always the case. Good to know! This made me wonder; have we become desensitized to "fanciness" on the web? If so, is it from overexposure, or other values (like clean and professional = more legit and important)? Does the design really matter, or does the placement of an element always get the trump position?