Look. Stop. Read... How we Scan Information around us.

While scanning through a long list of pending blog reads, I thought of observing how I scan them. I realized the pattern to be based on
- my existing knowledge of things around
- my interests to know something
- the way the text is put on the screen

As I went scrolling down on my Google Reader article after article, I only stopped if a heading caught my attention.

When I looked at the information on the reader my eye moved top to bottom across text to identify something I was familiar with. This was based on my existing familiarity with things. Something that looked interesting. My eye was typically blocked by words that had the first letter as capital. A strong looking word blocked my eye from flowing. If the word was identified by me then I stopped to read the title else I moved on.

This tells me to use keywords that the target audience is familiar with so its easy identify them. Then make the first
letter as capital so that it blocks the Eye Movement.

If a heading had a number, it attracted more attention because it gave me some free information that i could look at without reading the article. I got stopped by numbers.

Where there was a lot of text that looked all the same my eye was blocked by pattern breaking elements like a link. Then again if I encountered a link in quotes introducing a new term, i typically clicked on it. I did not click on a link that I knew I was already familiar with.  I also clicked on the first link that I found interesting rather than choosing among many of them. I did not click on more than 2 links in the same article. 

I was also stopped by articles that had images because here again I get a story in mind before reading up the article. And if i get curious enough I go ahead and read it.

Some of the keywords that attracted my attention were:
Game, Micro, Google, 10, 11.1b, MacBook Air, 8 things.., 10 best ..., awesome, 2.0, Jobs, "Text In Quotes"