Welcome to Interfaces.com

This blog is dedicated to product design issues.

I hope this online collection of notes would prove valuable not only to me but to all students and colleagues looking to develop innovating and interesting products. This site focuses on product design, conceptual design, interaction design, interface design, and failure analysis.

Member Login

Lost your password?

Not a member yet? Sign Up!

Color Blind Design

August 3, 2010
By


Do you see any difference between these two images? About 10% of the male population (with up to 20% among some ethnic groups) do not. Do differences in the way individuals perceive and process color information matter? Sometimes…

Consider this informational graphic:

It’s easy to see how the information contained within this chart has been transformed and no longer carries the same meaning. Which is the right one?

When designing information for communication, it’s important to consider the totality of the intended audience: What are their strength? What are their limitations? Like cognitive traits, perceptual differences have to be accommodated by good design.

Some issues that individuals with deuteranope deficit (red/green confusion) face is inability to tell the difference between colored items that are too thin (lines), point sources, and blinking lights (think traffic lights blinking green or yellow). These problems effect real-life performance and can lead to accidents: think traffic light color confusion. It is the job of a product designer to reduce the difficulties these individuals face.

You can use this URL to check your site for color blind usability:

http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

Tags: , , , ,

One Response to Color Blind Design

  1. Olga Werby on August 24, 2010 at 11:44 am

    Scientific American Online has a little slide show of color illusions:
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=illusions-colors
    It’s interesting to see the illusions in the context of color blindness.

Leave a Reply

Pipsqueak Articles

Designing for the Blind

Not much to add here — how many other cool video games are there for visually disabled? Using tactile clues instead of visual signals...
Read More »

Special Preview: Philosophy of Interaction and User Experience

A person uses a piece of software, a Web site, or any other product — “virtual” or “real” — to achieve a goal. The...
Read More »

End-User Development (EUD) Educational Preview

This is an interesting collection of videos and background materials on End-User Development — situations when end users design and develop software for their...
Read More »

Thinking about the Science of Communication and Interaction

Alien Senses

In the Galaxy Far Far Away… What if sentient being evolved on a planet with permanent cloud cover? What if these being never saw...
Read More »

Using Positive Emotion to Change Behavior

Games can be used to change our behavior — make something fun, and we are likely to do it again and again. Psychologists call...
Read More »

Special Preview: Social Media by Thomas Erickson

Interfaces.com was given a free advanced preview of Thomas Erickson’s report and videos on social computing. The videos are very well produced and provide...
Read More »

Failure to Communicate

Failure to Communicate

Sometimes failure to communicate happens at the end of the product distribution line. Below are some examples of what happens when sales people don’t...
Read More »

Design Variables