User-Minded Design Factors and the F-Shaped Pattern

I think the "Getting To Know Your Audience" and the Usability.gov reading went hand-in-hand mainly because they both focused on what the user does or expects when they view a website.

When designing anything, your audience/user/reader and whoever that person is should be in your initial thoughts. What are they expecting? What do they need? What do they want to take away from this? How will they interpret the layout? Will it make sense to them as an outsider? These are just a cluster of the multitude of questions you need to ask yourself when looking deeper into the audience of your website.

Although the Philosophe reading went over the steps one needs to take in order to define your targeted audience and what they need, what I found most interesting was the Usability.gov reading and the information about the F-shaped pattern the eyes follow when searching for info on a website.

The F-shaped pattern clearly shows that viewers do not read all of the information they are presented; only what is in those general areas is actually seen. The primary information, or what is most important, should be somewhere within that F-shaped pattern, above the scroll and in the first two paragraphs on the page.

This really does sum up the reading and how a designer should keep their audience in mind when making decisions: "There is a delicate balance between making information salient and too flashy causing it to be ignored." -Christi O'Connell, Usability.gov