On-line newspapers and multimedia content: an eye tracking study

On-line newspapers have gone through great development lately, actually changing the world of press. On the other hand, the electronic medium is often regarded as the plain counterpart of paper, with straight transpositions of both content and layout. Successful information design for the Web, however, needs careful choices about communication styles and structural elements, to create really useful news complements. In this article we focus on the multimedia component of on-line newspapers, which is surely one of their most distinctive features compared to printed versions. Using eye tracking technology, we have studied five main design issues related to multimedia, obtaining results which could only be guessed with "traditional" usability tests.