Are you a "linear" or "non-linear" reader? How does your experience compare with readings for this week?
I believe I am a non-linear reader. It is interesting to me because I did not read this prompt questions prior to reading the selected readings for this week. Thus, it was a great exercise for me to review three sites talking about the given topic, without knowing that I was going to answer whether or not I was a linear reader or not.
To support why I think I am a linear reader, I want to explain how I viewed the readings. For the first reading, I went through and read the subheads, and also noticed that there was a chart I was going to review. It was interesting because after I initially skimmed the site, I went back and started reading it. The first paragraph was about how I, as a reader, would skim the text and look for bold words and sub heads. I then went through the chart, and chose which one I thought was the most readable. I choose the combined text as my first choice, and the scannable as my second. I then noticed that there were percentages next to the options, and that my first choice had the largest percent usability. It seems that I review websites and text very similar to other people since I initially scanned the website, and also chose the most popular web format as the most pleasing to me.
To support that I scan websites before I read through it in a linear fashion, I am going to include an example from the website with the eye patterns on it. Before I even read the opening paragraph, I went down to the photos and looked at them. It was interesting because I tried to decode what they meant by looking at them before I thought of reading the descriptive paragraph above them. After the photos interested me, I was very interested in reading about them. It proves that I must prefer learning visually, and that perhaps a website that has descriptive photos would be the most beneficial to my learning style.
http://www.directcreative.com/blog/eye-tracking-websites
This site relates to this blog, and shows further examples of eye tracking and usability for websites.
I liked how you traced your reading experience with the Nielsen articles to support why you see yourself as a non-linear reader. That makes sense. I liked the outside article you found as well (in fact, as I read it, I scanned all the bold headlines first!). Your experience as a reader will certainly work well as we move into the next unit on web writing!
Note: again, I want to encourage you to make your links live in your blog. Go back to your UThink blog and to this entry, and select "edit entry." You will get your dialogue box back with your text. Find the URL that you want to make live; then highlight it, go to the icon that looks like a chain link, and click that icon. A dialogue box will come up that will ask you for the URL of the link you want to create. Copy and paste the URL in that dialogue box; then click "OK." This should get your link live, right in your blog.