Are there common mousing patterns on desktop?

Question

While there's research on eye gaze patterns over screens and paper (the F and Z patterns), I haven't discovered any research on mouse movement patterns on desktop (e.g., are there patterns on the first place).

I have some observations from watching mouse recording sessions, but I am not sure how to interpret them. I'd like to emphasize that I am interested in patterns of mouse movements, not mouse clicks. The latter are easily revealed by heatmaps.

My personal observation is that people tend to keep their cursor pointer on the right half of the screen. But I'm not sure if that is because they tend to keep the cursor pointer on the right half of the screen. To their dominant right hand by reflex or because most buttons and other interactive elements are on the right. Is there any research about typical mousing patterns?

Some practical implications from this could be:

• generating hypotheses about what constitutes "comfortable mouse travel" and ideas how to position UI elements for optimal mousing comfort;
• testing the hypothesis that people have innate preference for action-related UI elements positioned in the direction of their dominant hand (that is, on the right for right-handers), and they tend to keep the mouse cursor in the same direction, when not clicking.

Answer 1

There are couple of common mousing patterns on desktop that reflect how users typically interact with content on a screen.

Other than what you said F and Z pattern (which are applicable even for mouse patterns not just eye tracking), may be I can recall for now the below ones.

1. Pinball Pattern: Your users' mousing and eye movements are more scattered, jumping from one area of interest to another, often skipping large portions of the content in between. You can avoid its implications in by Making key elements visually distinct and strategically placed to capture attention quickly, as users may not follow a linear path.

2. Layer-Cake Pattern: Users scan headings or subheadings in a pattern that resembles a layer cake, moving vertically down the page while occasionally mousing over these key headings to find sections of interest.

3. Spiral Pattern: Some users may start at the center of the page and spiral outward with their mouse to explore the surrounding content. This is less common but can occur on content-dense pages.

4. Hovering Around Interactive Elements: This is most commonly seen pattern among almost every user. Users move their mouse erratically, skipping over large portions of content, especially when looking for specific information or keywords.

Last one but commonly seen is Scroll to the Bottom pattern where users scroll quickly to the bottom of the page, either to check for important information like contact details, footer links, or simply to assess the length of the content.

Check this out too https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/mouse-tracking-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-to-understand-user-behaviour-30180e6da44c