---
name: Lawn mower pattern
slug: lawn-mower-pattern
category: layout
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A scanning shape for tables where the eye runs across one row, drops
  down and runs back the other way, mowing the cells in alternating directions.
aliases:
  - name: lawnmower pattern
    source: community
  - name: lawn mower eyetracking pattern
    source: nngroup
tags:
  - perception
  - tables
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - spotted-pattern
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - comparison-table
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: The Lawn Mower Eyetracking Pattern for Scanning Comparison Tables, NN/g
    url: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/lawn-mower-pattern/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: laying out a comparison table for scanning
---

Watch someone compare four plans in a table and the gaze plot comes out looking like a mowed
lawn. The eye runs across the first row, drops to the second, runs back the other way, drops
again, and keeps alternating until the answer turns up or the table runs out. Nielsen Norman
Group named the shape from eye tracking of comparison tables, and it makes sense as an
economy: returning to the left edge of every row costs a long return sweep, and the reader
who is already inside the grid can just carry on from where the last row ended.

The consequence is easy to miss. Half the rows are read right to left, so a row whose
meaning depends on being read in order works for one row and fails for the next. The
practical rule is to put the values that are being compared where both directions arrive
first, which is the two ends of the row rather than the middle. Anything buried in a middle
column is read late in one direction and late in the other. It also means the row itself has
to be short: a mow across nine columns is not a mow, it is a search, and readers abandon it
by scrolling instead.

Two layout habits protect the pattern. Keep the row height tight enough that the drop to the
next row is unambiguous, since a tall row lets the eye lose which line it was on, and that is
what a [zebra striping](/zebra-striping) or a persistent row highlight is really for. And
resist stacking the table into cards on small screens without thinking, because the mow
disappears with the grid: stacked cards are read as one long serial run, which is fine for
one item and hopeless for comparing four.

The layout that provokes this pattern most reliably is the
[zigzag layout](/zigzag-layout), which alternates the side that content sits on down the
page and gets the eye reversing direction for the same reason a table row does. For the
tables themselves, see [comparison table](/comparison-table) and
[data table](/data-table): the first is the job the mow is doing, the second is the
structure it is doing it in.