
We skim through the content all the time.
Our brain is designed to consume less energy and get precise and needful information.
For this, it uses certain patterns to consume content, by identifying these patterns we can create content that has a higher chance to grab the human brain’s attention.
There are 6 + skimming patterns for our brain.
It will use all these patterns separately or combined with one another in different situations accordingly.
Understanding the skimming pattern of the brain lets the UX designers get into the user’s shoes.
Let’s get started.
F shaped pattern

This is the most commonly used skimming pattern of our brain. Our eyes scan the web/mobile content like an F shape.
We first scan the header or headline from left to right. Then check or another headline or sub-headline just below the main headline. After that, we go straight to the bottom or end of the article by fixing your focus point to the left-hand side of the screen.
In psychology, it is called the serial position effect (Primacy and recency effect). It states that people have a tendency to remember the first and last items of a series.

Layered cake pattern
If we are looking for some particular information our brain uses this layered cake pattern to find if the content is relevant or not.
Here we run through the main headline and sub-headlines from start to end.

Spotted design
Spotted design is used for a quick scan. It will be used when the user wants to know whether there is something that is interesting for him/her.

The user will skip a big chunk of text and scan the totally for specific action areas — links, digits, or a set of words with distinctive patterns.
Marking pattern
This pattern is mostly seen in mobile users. In simple terms, this is what we do when we scroll through Instagram feeds.
In this pattern, the user keeps the eye’s and focuses in one place, then scroll through the feed or swipes page.

Bypassing pattern
The bypassing pattern is used when people used to reed content formats like long article or PDF documents. These kinds of articles will contain a repetition of some words. And our brain easily identifies it at the first place itself.
To save that energy, the user will skip the first word of multiple lines because they all start with the same word and reads the whole article.

Commitment pattern
This is not for every one of us. Whenever a user feels highly motivated about a topic and generates a craving inside their brain to know in-depth about that topic, he or she will read everything on that page because of their interest in the content.

