Netflix and Spotify users ignore the top headings of content carousels and scan the screen in a unique L-pattern instead.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Following the Eye-Tracking Evidence: Established Web-Search Assumptions Fail in Carousel Interfaces
arXiv · 2604.21019
The Takeaway
Digital designers long assumed people browse websites using an F-pattern where eyes move horizontally across the top and then scan down. Eye-tracking data from modern horizontal carousels proves this industry standard is completely wrong for these layouts. People skip the header text entirely and dive straight into the images in a specific L-shaped path. This shift means the most prominent text on a streaming service is often the least effective piece of communication. Companies need to stop relying on labels and realize that visual cues are doing all the heavy lifting in app navigation.
From the abstract
Carousel interfaces have been the de-facto standard for streaming media services for over a decade. Yet, there has been very little research into user behavior with such interfaces, which thus remains poorly understood. Due to this lack of empirical research, previous work has assumed that behaviors established in single-list web-search interfaces, such as the F-pattern and the examination hypothesis, also apply to carousel interfaces, for instance when designing click models or evaluation metri