Alot of bad assumptions, especially by non designers on this topic.
The question is: If you have several tabs to use in navigation and you want the user to pay more attention to certain ones, how should you arrange the tabs?
The most obvious one is the left most tab (assuming left-to-right reading) should be the most important section. However, most people make the mistake right after that.
People assume the second tab is the one that users will read next. They think people will read the tabs as if they were a sentence in a book. This is incorrect. A better metaphor is that the user is a lion. They are scanning the plains looking for the right animal to leap on.
The user is usually bombarded by things they could click on. They have mammalian eyes which are accustomed to looking for edge cases. People tend to see the first, then skim through the middle and see the end. We are designed to try to make out the shapes of things. This is why Zebras have stripes. It protects the animals in the middle. It’s hard to find their edges.
So if you want the user to click on certain tabs, you should put them where their eyes will naturally go; the left and right edges. Save the middle for the rest of the stuff.
It’s amazing to me that people will swear up and down that the second tab is the most important. Unfortunately, this is one of those things that are UX old wives tales. Sounds good, but in reality are just not true.
Whatya think?