the choice of colors used in design for a range of media
64
votes
10answers
5k views
What effect would a grayscale color scheme have on UX?
I am thinking of designing a website that will have no color other than black, gray, and white (including links).
Will the absence of colors such as blue, green, etc. affect the user experience of ...
31
votes
2answers
2k views
What rules does Google use to make a button gray, blue, or red on their sites?
This has been an elusive topic, and I haven't yet been able to form my own conclusion about what Google's reasoning is to make a given button blue, red, or gray, given their latest design ethos. Take ...
30
votes
9answers
2k views
What resources do you use to find good color combinations? [closed]
My background is in web development, not UI design. I have no problem creating the layout and getting it pixel-perfect, but I can never figure out what colors to use and where. I have seen projects ...
20
votes
5answers
2k views
Choosing a set of colors
I'm not a graphic designer, and I can't afford one for my open source project, so I thought I'd crowdsource this one. I'm trying to work out a set of 6-8 easily-differentiable colors for categories in ...
18
votes
5answers
14k views
What is the best color combination for on screen reading?
I work at an airline as a pilot and I am involved in the "paperless" project which aims to have no more paper in the cockpit - all the data should be accessible from tablet devices.
We have a lot to ...
17
votes
12answers
2k views
Is this hard to read?
This is a snippet on a site i have just been building. I considered the readability etc, and the corporate colours, and tried to work with them.
Actually, I find it quite relaxing to read and view, ...
16
votes
4answers
536 views
How important is it to consider color for color blindness in a design
In response to this question about iconography, I was wondering about how much it is necessary to factor in color usability for people with color perception difficulties into a design.
The first ...
14
votes
10answers
876 views
How much color may a UI have?
I work on a Network management system (NMS) frontend. Basically this app shows a list of alarms, updated in realtime. Such NMS apps already exist in a large variety, but two things they have in ...
12
votes
3answers
703 views
Why some websites put a small contrasting bar on top of the page?
I've observed this pattern in practice at many places now, websites put a small contrasting bar on the top of the page. What is the rationale behind it?
Readability header:
Tenderapp header:
12
votes
2answers
443 views
Which colors would best convey 3 difficulty levels?
I'm making a baby toy/game to learn numbers and I have a menu with 3 buttons. The first button enters "learn mode", the second button is an easy quiz, and the third button is a medium quiz.
Are there ...
9
votes
3answers
421 views
Choosing colors for a subtle UI
I'm currently agonizing over how light I can make various colors in my UI before I adversely affect usability. The reason for the agonizing is that different monitors have different responses. Those ...
9
votes
5answers
2k views
Why do most financial apps use a black or dark background?
I was asked today to look into designing a stock monitoring windows 8 application and I was looking around for design ideas when I noticed an interesting trend where it seems like most of these stock ...
8
votes
4answers
244 views
Using a secondary set of colors to indicate which elements of the UI can be interacted with
I was reading this article about Metro UI designs, and I was struck by this statement:
Example, if you look under the hood of a new car, you will see areas
colored yellow whereas the rest is the ...
8
votes
10answers
575 views
Changing Colour of Social Media buttons to match Colour Palette
I'm interested in getting opinions on changing the colour of social media buttons (facebook/twitter/linkedin sign-up and login as well as sharing) to better fit in with the colour pallet of our ...
7
votes
3answers
2k views
Why are most social networking sites in blue?
Why do most social media websites use blue as the main color? e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, foursquare, ...
I am only interested in answers based on some scientific research.
7
votes
4answers
264 views
What research, patterns or techniques will help me choose the correct colors (or saturations) to the various UI elements of a page?
I am building a tool that will be used by call center agents. It is to help them support products on behalf of the customers who call up. It acts as a portal to many different types of product ...
6
votes
2answers
131 views
What colors to use in contrast to designs using warm colors?
When a site's identity contains (or consists of) warm colors, would you also use warm colors as the main color(s) for its design or not?
The problem I find in using warm colors as the main colors in ...
6
votes
3answers
326 views
Are dark non neutrals colors suited for page backgrounds or is it more advisable to go for neutral colors like black or dark grey?
I am just finishing up a site for a non profit and we are having a bit of a debate of about what the background color should be
I have been trying to emphasise on the need for a neutral color like ...
6
votes
3answers
266 views
Providing warm colors when the content is depressing?
I had posted a question earlier asking for views on what would be the ideal background color to enhance readability and had indicated my inclination towards having a dark or a greyish background to ...
6
votes
2answers
129 views
Multipart progress / status bar colours
I am working on an application that needs to show users their currents status / progress in performing a task on a number of items. There are three states that each item can have:
New (blue) - ...
6
votes
2answers
162 views
Coloring Schemes
I am very new to mobile programming...basically just starting to fiddle with it today. :)
I remember a project I did back in school that surveyed people (at a mall lol) and I asked them which text ...
6
votes
5answers
117 views
On news apps, how does using a different colour for each category help the user?
On news websites and news apps, a specific colour is often used for the link to each category (background colour or underline colour), and I would like to understand how this is helpful for the user, ...
6
votes
2answers
97 views
What is a good color combination, visibility for outside use
I am designing the layout for a touchscreen for outside use, What are some good color combination to use that will be visible under the sun light for outside use? Maybe bright neon colors?
5
votes
2answers
148 views
What is the validity of contrast and colours tests?
I just ran a contrast and colour test (using checkmycolours.com in this case) on our corporate site (www.dotblue.net; if you care) and it reports quite some failures. However, I explicitly optimized ...
5
votes
5answers
193 views
Effect on usability if I use green and red colors (for meaning) in an app whose color scheme does not include those colors?
I am working on an application that models physical hardware to the user. As such, showing things colored red seems to be a very natural way to communicate an error state, and showing them green ...
5
votes
3answers
494 views
How can I choose a colour palette for multiple data visualization types?
I'm currently implementing the Google Visualization API into an existing platform, one requirement of which is the ability to choose custom colours for chart elements (such as pie slices and columns).
...
5
votes
2answers
162 views
How important is the ability to change the color theme on a desktop application?
At my company we create Windows desktop applications using Microsoft's .Net (WPF to be specific). The window or "chrome" is completely customized, meaning that we do not use the standard Windows ...
5
votes
2answers
161 views
How should I format question-response sections in a document?
I work on proposals that need to be formatted in question-response sections. Currently, we use different colors to distinguish between questions and responses. However, members of my team want to make ...
5
votes
2answers
235 views
Stressless user experience for data entry forms
We're currently discussing a redesign of the applications we develop for internal use. Now, to change things for the better, we'd like to make as many UX considerations as possible before we go ahead. ...
4
votes
3answers
616 views
What are some best practices in picking navigation bar background color? [closed]
I am using twitter bootstrap and I don't like the default dark gray background color for the navbar.
So I was thinking of chosing a different color. But being a programmer and not a designer first ...
4
votes
2answers
198 views
Is there any research on the color schemes which work with different genders
I am working on designing an eCommerce site where the focus is a user group with the age group of 30+ women with expensive tastes and I was trying to find if there is any research on the color schemes ...
4
votes
2answers
613 views
Tablet interface design when used outdoors - handling bright light
I have a line-of-business tablet application that is used outdoors day and night in a vehicle. One of the users recently provided feedback that they find it difficult to read the screen when wearing ...
4
votes
1answer
111 views
How can I communicate linear progress through a series of states with color?
I'm trying to help visualize a portfolio of projects.
They start off in the first state with some basic details, then they're reviewed, fully defined, and finally, work is begun.
Right now, the ...
4
votes
4answers
366 views
Registration Button Research
I'm redesigning the registration page for my website, and I'm wondering if anyone has come across any research relating to the affects of different wording and colors for the registration button?
How ...
4
votes
2answers
429 views
How to choose colors wisely to work with Low brightness and contrast screens?
In Mobile Phone and Tablets to save battery many people (Including me) keep brightness and contrast low. And sometime it makes harder to read if color scheme is not good.
So my question is how to ...
4
votes
2answers
547 views
Reason that most (business) applications have a blue theme?
Most applications use blue as their central color, particularly business applications (e.g. Windows uses blue in most of it's chrome).
I am being pushed to use purple throughout our current ...
3
votes
2answers
135 views
Changing a White Background to…?
I am in the process of creating a website. Currently the website has a solid white background with black text. However, on different monitors the white background can be blinding bright. I have ...
3
votes
2answers
612 views
Choosing a button colour scheme
I'm currently implementing some design changes to a web application. Currently, the application uses default browser buttons for everything, but I've now been supplied with a number of custom button ...
3
votes
2answers
237 views
Is it advisable to use own color scheme for Android app
Android does come with 2 default color scheme : Holo light and Holo dark.
I was wondering, is it advisable to use own color scheme in Android app? What kind of consideration we should taken in, when ...
3
votes
3answers
248 views
Remove color to add emphasis
Context
I'm working on a new user interface for a project portal system. Part of the system is a dashboard that lets the user know what the status of his project is. This dashboard is also there to ...
3
votes
4answers
236 views
Best way to choose color combination from palette?
I have the following scenario:
This is a color picker for a software we're developing. Basically we have different Groups for Items and Items are displayed as boxes in a grid with a given color ...
3
votes
0answers
32 views
How does background,text colors affects user's experience in reading? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate(s):
Choosing a set of colors
Is this color readable?
What is the best color combination for on screen reading?
My QUESTION -
How does background and text colors ...
2
votes
4answers
228 views
Which version of this upcoming beer app UI do you think is more effective and why? [closed]
I am trying to decide which version of my layout to go with from a color and post layout perspective. Any reasoning for your choice would be really helpful!
...
2
votes
2answers
118 views
Colors for the date period
I'm want to emphasise date period(2 dates: start and end) in table cell.
Usually it's green for start and red for the end, but I believe it'll be too distracting...
2
votes
1answer
132 views
Resources explaining how to approach UI theming
I'm looking for resources that best describe picking and using colors within a user interface. For example, elements that are good to color and elements that should have no or little color impact. I ...
2
votes
2answers
71 views
Better to Auto-change skins or allow selection?
I am designing a site with 3 basic skins. Each skin corresponds to a "team". Generally these teams face off about once a week or so in major tournaments, and one of the 3 teams will always win.
For ...
1
vote
2answers
222 views
What is the value of accent colors with regards to UX?
I have been hearing a lot about how accent colors help in visualizing the key points on the page and drawing the eye to critical action items but I havent really got the understanding of how they ...
1
vote
2answers
126 views
Button color for access and deny permissions buttons?
I need to create an email template which is auto generated when an user requests access permissions to a document .The email template is sent to the document owner and is in this format :
Subject: ...
1
vote
1answer
116 views
Color schemes for text ads
What are the most effective color schemes for text ads? Google's default is blue for headlines, black for body texts and green for links.
The Norwegian Color Empire gave the "Color of the year" award ...
1
vote
2answers
100 views
Mobile app considering ecology - is it possible to blend light green into calm scheme?
At workplace I was asked to design the interface for mobile application (for tablets and mobile phones). I'm not a professional designer so I got stuck already with the colour scheme.
This ...
