Have attitudes to, and use of colour in, information systems changed over recent years as monitors have got better and the number of things on professionals screens multiplied?
As screens get bigger and better, and many professionals now work on two or more screens, the issue has grown of how best to readily inform the user with appropriate cues about what he or she is looking at.
It is true that shades of neutral grey can be quite pleasing
Received wisdom has been that use of various shades of mid-atlantic grey is safe and generally best. This view has been strengthened where garish colours have been deployed and users have had to resort to dark glasses and aspirins. It is true that shades of grey can be quite pleasing and probably no-one ever got fired for developing a grey interface.
However, where any integrated information system, displaying a wide variety of data, nestles on your desktop amongst a variety of other similarly grey artifacts it can be quite difficult to know immediately what you are looking at and clearly data only becomes information when the user understands what it is they are contemplating.
Can colour improve the user experience?
There are many ways of informing the user but I have long held the view that colour is the best. It is simple, non verbal and quickly becomes intuitive.
So how do you do this well and avoid the aspirin syndrome?
Clearly a good designer is a great start, but we thought maybe there was more to it than just artistic intuition, maybe there was a pattern we could identify and use?
Every software designer worth their salt is an expert at spotting and exploiting patterns, pattern recognition is at the heart of analysing a system and delivering an effective solution.
We took the mathematical approach
Having been guilty in the past of some arguably heavy handed use of the colour brush, we decided to look at the maths. The outcome was a series of colours which had consistent RBG values, different combinations of a limited set of RBG values, where related types of information had colours associated with them which were themselves associated mathematically.
Avoid large areas or blocks of colour.
We took various shades of grey and used minimal areas of the chosen colours, just enough to cue the user subtly so that they would automatically associate each colour with the relevant type of information. We took it as axiomatic that we should avoid any big blocks of strong colour.
Then we used different densities of the colour to signify immediacy, more dense more immediate, less dense less immediate - further away. Fairly simple, but effective.
An unqualified success - "easy on the eye"
The result has been consistent user approval and a complete absence of any desire to make any further changes so we have at least secured feature-lock on colour. Thus I would conclude that professionals are now ready for the introduction of some colour into their lives, provided it is done just right, so it is pleasent to look at - as one client observed - "easy on the eye".
Some questions for you:
1 how do you feel generally about colour in your computer interface?
2 do you associate any colours with happiness?
3 do you associate any colours with sadness?
4 do you associate any colours with success?
5 do you associate any colours with failure?
-----ENDS-----
Comments