Use of Colors

Advantages of Using Color | Rules for the Use of Color

Advantages of Using Color

The use of colors can effectively support human performance in visual information processing. Even if this is not the case, users find colors more pleasant, more aesthetically pleasing, inspiring or useful than a monochromatic presentation. Colors can increase the users' self-assurance to find their way around and to find the information they are searching for.

Use of colors improves the following abilities:

Separating figure from ground, that is, separating the important from the less important
Discerning the inner structure of objects, finding groupings
Searching, discovering, and localizing objects
Recognizing and remembering

For more complex tasks like reading, memorizing, drawing conclusions, or deciding the effect of color cannot as easily proven.

Rules for the Use of Color

General Rules

When designing a screen, diagram or graphic, start with a black-and-white design.
Use colors consistently.

Colors and Color Differences

Lightness Ranking of the most-used screen colors: White, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, blue, black

Color differences may be distracting; therefore use them only sparingly and intentionally.
Avoid using highly saturated complementary colors, because users have to focus differently for these colors; less saturated colors are less straining.
If you want to use small hue differences, use yellow or blue, do not use red or purple.
Use complementary colors (red-green, blue-yellow) if differentiation of colors is intended.

Color Blindness, Elderly Users

Color blindness: A colored presentation may be better than a monochromatic one, but check the effect with color blind users.
Code colors redundantly to support color blind users: Do not rely on hue differences alone, but add also lightness differences.
Elderly users need more brightness in order to differentiate colors.