Following the link trail to Jakob Nielsen

Over the weekend, this pops up in my dashboard:

People Read Web Pages in an F-Shaped Pattern

According to a study by Jakob Nielsen, when we read a page, our eye automatically traces the text in an F-shape. The first paragraph is the one read in its entirety, as we trace the first long line of the ‘F.’ The next paragraph doesn’t fare as well, getting only half that much attention as we track about mid-way through the paragraph, tracing the second short line of the ‘F.’ The last step is simply to skim down the rest of the article, vertically.

Interesting! I’m always interested in reading patterns. (Read: I’m a NERD.) I click through and I go to The Next Web’s post, which is dated yesterday. It references a Jakob Nielsen study about reading patterns. Oh, is there a new one? I click through and land here, a Sept. 2010 entry about the Nielsen study. OK, so it’s a little dusty. No harm. So, I click through again, hoping against hope that I will get to the original study. And I do. Here. It’s from April …. 2006.

Can anyone tell me if our reading habits have changed? Is this original study by Nielsen still relevant? I think so (and his last book on the subject came out more recently, in 2009), but to give it no context in the design landscape 5 years later does readers a disservice. Personally, I am as intrigued by Nielsen as I am in his study. I have visited his UseIt.com in the past and have marveled that a usability guru expert could have a site that looks so … meh.

Does usable have to be so visually unappealing? Does UseIt.com represent some pinnacle of usability that I just don’t get? That’s a new study by Nielsen that I would read.