Banner blindness & eye tracking

http://www.internettg.org/newsletter/dec98/banner_blindness.html
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/banner_blindnes.html

The links are to the original article on "banner blindness" and Don 
Norman's review of it. To generalize in a few words, I think the term 
refers to two things: (1) people don't look at things that look like 
ads, and (2) people learn what data looks like in a given context, so 
they don't spend much time looking at anything else.  I've always 
thought that people don't/can't see things at the very top of a 
screen/window/page, either, which seems related to #2.

I just did a study where none of the participants noticed some new 
small navigation elements. They've all been using this system for 
many months and knew their way around it, so I think they just didn't 
bother looking at or looking for new items. It showed up in a number 
of cases. Fascinating (for me) and frustrating (for my client).

As I was starting to write up my report, I wondered if anyone has 
done any eye-tracking studies to see if this shows up as a difference 
between new and experience users at a particular site or application.

thanks				-- hs

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