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Color to convey information
Color and User Interface...
By: David K. Every
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2002-04-02 00:00:00
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 olor is for more than making a computer look like a geeks wardrobe. Color can, and should, convey extra information.
There are many examples of proper and improper use of color. The Mac attempted to use color to portray more information. PC used to represent text in every color except how it would look on the final page; green on black page, amber on black, white on black, or multi-colored text on a black page. Before multi-color printers, this was less than useful. The Mac (and Xerox Star before it), introduced the high contrast black text on a white background, which would look like the page it is printed on, and is an improvement in clarity and readability. This was the idea of WYSIWYG (What-you-see-is-what you get).
With Windows and the PC's color is for fun, not for function. You threw colors around, because you could. Rarely did the color have a purpose, other than to annoy. When Apple added color they decided it would have a purpose.
In the Mac finder, users can tint (colorize towards a color) icons to label categories that an icon can belong to. So I can select an icon, and "label" it with a category (color), and then search by label (color) or sort by label (color). Visually, I can scan for things of that color, and my eye can find all the "blue" or "red" things quickly. Color had function.
Remember, color should not be the only way to see information, it should enhance it. Notice the "Label" column? It represents the labels function (color) as well, it just does so with a textual representation (so that if you are on a black & white or grayscale monitor, or you are color blind, you can still use them). Also notice that the window is sorted by label (color), which is why the column is not alphabetical, and that the color column is darker (shaded) to show that this is the selected column (mode); another example of color and shade conveying information. So color is helping to enhance the idea of custom labels and vise versa. It is adding to the information conveyed and has purpose. This is good user interface.
Again, Sadly, OSX is like Windows. Users can't use color, they are victims of it. They can see things in whatever colors the developers choose; and they can't label folders or use their own systems for searching or working with icons. You can use color in any way that Apple decides that you can.
     
Color has meaning; like red usually means "stop", yellow often means "caution" or "alert", and green means "go". But while color can enhance meaning, it should never be the only way to convey it. Read the article on color and contrast. So it is a bad use of color is to have things all the same shape, and have them do different things based on color (or position) alone. With this in mind, OSX used a sideways traffic light as windows controls.
This is a perfect "how not to" of good User Interface. In many ways, users have to fight their natural urges to never click on the little traffic lights (especially the red one), and these controls convey absolutely no useful information with their shape.
When you "roll over" the blobs with the cursor, you get some shapes; an X, - or +. The 'x' is meant to convey that the window will go away. Unless you've made a change to the document and then the X is a dot, and doesn't change when you roll over it. And the '+' is meant to convey that sometimes it will grow the window (and sometimes shrink it). And the '-' will make it minimize to the dock. There's also an amorphous gray/white blob to the right, that looks a lot like the blobs on the left, but that one means that the controls on the window might go away (unless they don't). I have no idea what that color is trying to convey.
        
You can use color for selections. You can add color to pages. You can use color to emphasize or attract attention. You can even use colors in icons for appeal. But it is important that the color always have a purpose (and add value). Whether you mean it or not, a big red stop sign icon will convey a certain message; it is up to the designer to know what message they are conveying.
 
Microsoft felt that the user, or app writer, should have any ability with color they wanted. They could make red text on a blue background (so colorblind people can't use the computer). There was no need for taste or style. Color is about adding a gratuitous feature, giving people useless configurability, and for making people think they are getting something -- not about actually giving them something of value. In fact giving some people configurability without constraints or guidelines can actually be counterproductive, since they all have to learn the same mistakes -- it is like having roads without lines or rules. Just because you can wear stripes and plaids together, does not mean that you should. Windows is like letting your geeky, unfashionable, colorblind (or completely blind) friend dress you every morning.
Accordingly, Windows gives you the ability to do whatever you want with color, and would certainly not presume to help make the computer easier to use, nor make it display information better. Being free to set whatever colors you want, do whatever they want with color, with no guidelines, no standards (as in no standardized selection color) and so on, is a bad idea (from an interface perspective). Leaving this free to Apps (and developers) to implement colors how they want, without guidelines, is also a bad idea.
Using color to look good, but not convey information, is not any better. Color is not just for decoration or reducing the usability of the interface -- it can enhance it, if used correctly. OSX chooses to control color for you; color is the computers to use, not yours. You will like the colors they choose, or else. Sadly, the people choosing those colors seem to have a graphic artists view of the world, but not a user interface persons. So you get things that look nice, but are not as usable as they could or should be. They are not using color well to convey information, other than "sex and marketing sells" and usability and high quality matters less than it should.
On the Mac, color had purpose, direction and standards. The colors will match from machine to machine, and it will even match the real world. When you pick a selection color it will be used across all Applications (unlike the Windows or Aqua world). The interface used color the same way across Applications (unlike the Windows or Aqua world). And color adds information and value to the usability of the interface (also unlike the Windows or Aqua world).
So when it comes to understanding Color and using it properly (for interface). Now you, I, and the old Apple people, all "got it". Microsoft and the new descision makers at Apple do not.
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