Scrolling and Attention

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for March 22 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html
		
Summary:
Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page
fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention
below the fold.
			
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Usability Week 2010 conference

  > New York, NY: THIS WEEK
  > Chicago, IL: April 19-24
  > London, UK: May 16-21
  > San Francisco, CA: June 14-19
  > Toronto, Canada: August 9-14

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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WHY NO FITTS' LAW DISCUSSION IN PROXIMITY ARTICLE?

A few readers emailed me to ask why I didn't discuss Fitts' Law in my last
column (on the proximity between action and object):

  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/action-object-closeness.html

Yes, Fitts' Law is relevant to the design question in the Alertbox, and
it's indeed one of the topics covered in the full-day seminar on
Human-Computer Interaction Principles that served as background for my
article:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/hci_principles.html

So, given that the topic is (a) relevant and (b) covered in the course,
why was it not also covered in the article? Two reasons:

(1) On the Web, articles can't provide comprehensive coverage. They have
to focus on shorter, more polemic issues. Thorough coverage has its place,
and that place is textbooks and seminars. Web users are too impatient to
wade through articles that cover all possible aspects of the question
under discussion. The #1 rule of Web editing is to CUT.

(2) While Fitts' Law is *relevant*, it's not the most *important* HCI
principle for the usability issue at hand. (Briefly, Fitts' Law is a
formula for the time to click an object: faster the bigger it is and
slower the farther away it is.) The difference in target acquisition times
may be a second or two, but the problem of users completely overlooking a
feature can cost many minutes of wasted work and even lost business. Thus,
I focused on discussing that second question in this brief article.

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STUDENT VOLUNTEERS NEEDED, CHICAGO

We need student volunteers to staff sessions during Usability Week Chicago
(April 19-24). Duties are light (distributing handouts, managing the
microphone), and you get free admission to the full week of world-class
speakers and get to meet hundreds of user experience professionals.

Available for full-time students only.

If interested, contact [email protected]

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YAHOO! TIMES SQUARE SIGN = SIGN OF THE TIMES?

Arrived in New York for this week's conference. Our hotel is next to Times
Square, where I frequently pass Yahoo's big neon sign. Sadly, two of the
letter (and the exclamation point) are dark, and still haven't been fixed.
Sign of the times?