

Experienced Users View Reddit Differently - bkrausz
http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/experienced-users-view-reddit-differently/

======
moultano
Using a rainbow spectrum for heatmaps is bad design. Blocks of color become
visual categories rather than quantities.

The only good use for them I can think of is if the graph is on a log-scale
and the changes in color represent orders of magnitude difference. For a
simple heatmap though it'd be much better to just have a smooth gradient
between two colors.

Sorry to nit, the article was interesting. That's just a peeve of mine.

~~~
kwantam
Your comment reminded me of this excellent article from an IBM researcher:

"Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be Worried About Color?"
<http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/lloydt/color/color.HTM>

Some very excellent examples of how using a different set of colors in your
heatmap has a huge impact on how it's perceived.

~~~
lbarrow
GazeHawk intern here. These are really good points. We're aware that heatmaps
can be problematic and we think about tweaking the way we build them quite a
bit. Maybe in a few blog posts time you'll notice that we're using a
different-looking visualization. I've put that IBM study into our "food for
thought" reading list.

~~~
panacea
You should, because I was wondering why experienced redditors seemed to be
fixated on blank space according to this image:
[http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/redd...](http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/reddit-noobs-vs-pros-thumb.png)

...The two red hot-spots to the right and further down the page.

Is it an emergent distortion because of the heat map? Is it an aggregate spot
between the link above and the link below that ends up being significant? Do
experienced redditors rest their eyes on blank patches of the page??

~~~
lbarrow
It's the heatmap. The threshold between red and white in the heatmap appears
to be more meaningful than it actually is.

------
paulirish
Additionally, the veteran users scope out the source domain of each link as a
quick indicator of the type of content, whereas the other users rely more
heavily on the headline.

~~~
acavailhez
More specifically the check if it's an imgur.com link

As they are images, always available, quickly loaded, imgur links kind of
optimise the thrill/time factor

~~~
bermanoid
For super-optimal Reddit viewing speed, use the HoverZoom Chrome extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nonjdcjchghhkdooln...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nonjdcjchghhkdoolnlbekcfllmednbl)

Then you don't even have to click the link to see cat pictures, you just hover
and move on when it's not very funny.

------
rwolf
"...we can easily demonstrate that reading reddit is a skill that develops and
changes over time..."

Actually, you've failed to demonstrate that. A better test would be to record
first time visitors and then come back after they've become long time users
and record again. That way, you could rule out the mitigating factor that you
mentioned earlier in the article:

"...indicating that either only certain types of people become redditors, or
that the veterans’ reading patterns had changed..."

------
tty
As a veteran redditor (6 years now), I wouldn't even be looking at that
frontpage without logging into my account where I'm unsubscribed from all the
default subreddits.

~~~
StavrosK
Same here. The heatmap for the pro users should be all on the "sign in" box.

------
Shenglong
_Veteran redditors barely paid any attention to the “welcome to reddit”
header, whereas the new users stared at it for a long time_

I'm really not impressed with this conclusion.

------
erikb
From other things deriving I would guess, that veteran users become more
efficient, looking for what they really care about instead of letting their
eyes and brain parse every letter. It's the same for me here on HN. I don't
care about 90% of the content, even from the front page. So I don't even read
it just scroll until my eyes find words they consider interesting. But I spend
more time researching other sources to an interesting topic and actually spent
some meaningful time writing meaningful comments (or at least try to).

 _edit_ I even end up more often these days using the browser search function
to not need to read every entry.

------
pmr_
The problem with heatmaps like this is that they don't actually give any
information to what is the cause of the changed attention. Has the attention
span become shorter, has the knowledge of where the better posts are and how
to identify them become internal or is regular visitor to reddit simply not
interested in too many stories because they know they come back in a few
minutes?

Only with some causal correlation between user behaviour and your site you can
change your site to adapt to your users. I really would like to see more
research on this.

------
bchaney
Wouldn't veteran users, in many cases, have already looked at the front page?
They check the top 2-3 articles to see if anything is new and then can
skim/see the thumbnail for any link below the top few. I feel like this would
make a big impact as the first time I look at the frontpage in the morning I
read it differently than later in the day.

------
bdhe
I wonder why the concentration right at the bottom-right of the page (which
contains site links and FAQ) is present for experienced users but absent for
others.

~~~
icebraining
Personally, I look at it quite often while I'm waiting for RES¹ to load a new
page of content. But I assume RES wasn't used in this test.

¹ Reddit Enhancement Suite (<http://reddit.honestbleeps.com/>)

~~~
panacea
Agreed... the RES 'loading next page' cog icon is directly above the 'reddit
tools' footer in my setup, and I'm guessing it's above the 'help' for people
with smaller monitors, and above the 'about us' for those with larger
monitors.

I'm finding this fascinating.

------
jolan
Would you folks consider reviewing the assertions made by uxmovement.com
sometime?

~~~
lbarrow
What assertions in particular did you have in mind?

~~~
jolan
He typically says X is faster than Y with a visual workflow. It'd be
interesting to test that with GazeHawk.

------
john2x
How do they track where the users are looking?

~~~
shazow
GazeHawk is a YC startup that does eye tracking using webcams. More about it
here: <http://www.gazehawk.com/>

Presumably they got a bunch of people who were willing to participate in the
study, then showed them the same screenshot of Reddit and tracked their eyes
using their technology.

