Tuesday, November 10, 2015

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 same color of the engine etc. Car manufacturers do this on purpose, they want you to touch yellow yourself but if it is not yellow and you are not mechanically minded – leave alone.



The author recommends using a color like Yellow as the secondary color as a means to draw people’s attention to the fact "I’m ok if you touch this, you won’t break anything if you do" thinking .I am a little unsure about this mentality that if you see something which is marked a different color other than the primary or background color,you would immediately mark it as a safe.


What are your views on it?



Answer



As the original author, i'll add my reasons:


It has to do with the fact pattern recognition is a built in component within humans, once we identify a familiar pattern it then becomes easier to seed.


The thing is, most users don't turn up to the average software as UX virgins? that is to say they aren't using a computer for the first time (some solutions are excluded of course). Typically the mainstream UX out there is often a horrible or confusing experience, all the primary / secondary color selection does is encourage that the user pick-up on the differences between chrome colors and input colors. Input colors = good!


It has a bit to do with extraneous cognitive load meets gestalt's laws of organisation.



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