The Power of Color: Color as a Visual Communication Tool in User Interface Design

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Nowadays, when users spend less than a few seconds on a website before proceeding to another one, user interface designers study various instruments that help to grab the viewer’s attention immediately. As Singh claims, an average person spends up to 1.5 minutes forming an opinion about a product or service (2006, p.3). Subsequently, only the most noticeable features that can be processed during a short period of time, can impact one’s feelings towards the product. One of such elements is color - according to the aforementioned piece of research, up to 92% of people state that color is the first feature that they associate with given products. Color is an important visual communication tool that can navigate the viewer, convey a certain message, and serve aesthetic purposes. Moreover, color is also one of the most easily recognizable attributes that can affect the process of product assessment. As a result, the selection of a color palette is a complex procedure that requires multiple perspectives. In the context of web design and user interface design, the use of color is often determined by such factors as color psychology, user demographics, general associations with the industry, common industry practices, and the cultural context of the target audience. This claim also implies that a strong color palette can become a powerful tool that helps the user to navigate throughout the web page and affects the user’s perception, and subsequently, behavior. The following paper aims at exploring color as a functional element of visual communication, as well as defining whether the choice and utilization of color should be meaningful in the context of digital space; additionally, this piece of research focuses on studying color as a tool for user navigation. In order to answer research questions and support the aforementioned hypothesis, such research methods as the assessment of user preferences through the questionnaire and an examination of websites through the prism of content analysis were implemented.