11 replies to this topic

[glyn]

I'm divided between two choices for a new website design.

One uses a red horizonal meny bar, and the other a grey.

The text is white.

Come on Kim tell me that I'm right to pick grey (colour blindness and ease of reading).

I need some concrete research.

Markets are EU and Japan/China.

ASAP.

Cheers

Edited by glyn, 03 September 2012 - 02:42 AM.

[joedolson]

Without knowing the shade of gray or the shade of red, it's hard to give you any information on color blindness response. You can do a color contrast check between them, however, and see where they fall on the WCAG color contrast guidelines:

http://www.joedolson...ast-compare.php

If it's a dark grey, you're probably fine. But if it's pretty light - in the #777/#888 range -- that's probably not providing enough contrast to be useful.

From a straight-up readability perspective, there's no technical difference between choosing something in a red spectrum vs a gray spectrum. The specific shade, however, matters immensely.

You may also want to read up on the general readability of inverse color schemes (light text on a dark background):

http://www.joedolson...-color-schemes/

[cre8pc]

Who is your target visitor?

Your color choices, for best usability, should:

Be aware of colorblind users, such as men, who are more colorblind. Red is typically not seen as red.

Age of visitors. While younger readers tolerate situations where contrasts are muddy, older visitors do struggle. When using white or light gray text color against colored background, while it looks really cool, follow what Joe suggested. I always test colors and contrasts.

Emotions. Humans place different emotions on colors. Blue is comforting. The color palette should be complimentary colors. Aim for an overall sense of whatever it is you wish to convey (excitement, professional/straight, professional with a bit of jazz, playful, calm/healing, cool dude, etc.)

Studies - both men and women dislike red and orange and brown; men dislike purple while women like it, both like blue...

Asian countries are fine with red.

Will see if I can find more info on countries outside the USA .

[cre8pc]

Still hunting for country specific color studies...

The Use of Color in User Interfaces

An Empirical Investigation of Color Temperature and Gender Effects on Web Aesthetics

The following list summarizes practical take-aways that practitioners can get from this article:

• Choose a Web site’s colors wisely as they will impact visitors’ impressions of its order and creativity.
• The safest split-complementary color schemes (in terms of influencing users’ impressions of a Web site’s aesthetic appeal) are those with a cool primary color (e.g., blue) for the top or global part of the page. Similarly, a cool secondary color is safer than a warm one. It should be noted that context is an overriding factor; in certain cases warm color combinations may result in higher aesthetic appeal.
• Using cool color schemes will create favorable impressions about the Web site’s design, which in turn may translate in building credibility and trust.
• Web site designs that appear orderly are more likely to be also perceived as aesthetically pleasing and in turn more usable.
• No gender differences arose in terms of color preference in this context (i.e., hotel Web sites).
• When gauging the appeal of a Web site design, two discriminant dimensions should always be measured, i.e., classical and expressive aesthetics.
• Web site’s orderly presentation. Designers and managers should gauge users’ perceptions on the Web site’s clarity, aesthetics, pleasantness (as shown in this study), cleanliness, and symmetry (validated in past studies).
• Even if designers are interested in producing creative, fascinating Web sites, they would be wise to consider orderly presentation given its very large effect on users’ perceptions of expressive aesthetics.

This may offer insights into usability by country - http://www.globaluse...try-facts/japan Global User Research, sort by country.

[glyn]

Thanks all for this great information.

[cre8pc]

I know I have more. Between my books, notebooks, Read This apps on two computers, folders on two computers and the mess of info in my head, I'm not the most organized geek girl around. I need the color/countries data too. When I find it, will put it in the Resources section. Where I won't lose it

[joedolson]

For research into cultural impact of color, a good search is to explore color symbolism for the culture you're targeting. When you're targeting multicultural audiences with the same site, you have to be relatively open minded about what you want.

There are a lot of articles around for color symbolism - and it's different for each culture group.

[iamlost]

I'm coming late to this one...

There are significant colour considerations beyond ease of reading and 'blindness' that can also prove critical, i.e. ethnic, cultural, emotional, gender preferences...

Red is especially problematic as it has considerable social, emotional differences in your mentioned markets, i.e. China::luck, Japan::danger.

There is a lot of literature on this subject unfortunately most is behind paywalls or in print.

One interesting resource is the zoho.co.uk interactive version of the Colours in Culture data visualisation from the cover of David McCandless‘ book "Information is Beautiful".

[tommr]

Thanks for the post and replies.  I was happy to discover that a cooler page was not displeasing to either gender.
It made me think about why our customers request vanilla fragrance so often as opposed to some of the other "stronger" fragrances.

Not everyone loves vanilla but few people dislike it.
 

[glyn]

Adding this piece of reseach now i found some...

 

yum yum!

 

The Influence of E-commerce Website Colors on Usability

Link to PDF: http://www.kmcms.net...color_pelet.pdf

 

The biggest surprise for me is that I was able to remember all the way back to a post I made in September!!

 

Enjoy.

[TheAlex]

I'm coming late to this one...

There are significant colour considerations beyond ease of reading and 'blindness' that can also prove critical, i.e. ethnic, cultural, emotional, gender preferences...

Red is especially problematic as it has considerable social, emotional differences in your mentioned markets, i.e. China::luck, Japan::danger.

There is a lot of literature on this subject unfortunately most is behind paywalls or in print.

One interesting resource is the zoho.co.uk interactive version of the Colours in Culture data visualisation from the cover of David McCandless‘ book "Information is Beautiful".

 

I thought red was positive in both China and Japan. In China it symbolises good fortune (which explains the amount of red you see in Chinese New Year celebrations) and in Japan it's positive too as they see it as the colour of the sun. The red circle on the Japanese flag represents the sun.

[chuckfinley]

I just saw this today ->

 

How Color Affects Your Spending