Usable Color
Color permeates design. Yet color training is typically limited to color theory, marketing, and limited accessibility issues, leaving its full power unrealized. Color can reduce cognitive load, turn data into quantitative or qualitative knowledge, and help users make better decisions.
Just as the right chart type helps tell an honest data story, the right colors can make data visualization and software more usable. With this book (or workshop), designers will better:
- Understand the specific ways color conveys information.
- Apply color usability guidelines (including data visualization for the color-blind).
- Reduce confusion and improve decision-making for users.
Color permeates design. Yet color training is typically limited to color theory, marketing, and limited accessibility issues, leaving its full power unrealized. Color can reduce cognitive load, turn data into quantitative or qualitative knowledge, and help users make better decisions.
Just as the right chart type helps tell an honest data story, the right colors can make data visualization and software more usable. With this book (or workshop), designers will better:
- Understand the specific ways color conveys information.
- Apply color usability guidelines (including data visualization for the color-blind).
- Reduce confusion and improve decision-making for users.
Table of Contents
The following chapters will be interspersed with interviews with experts in different aspects of color usability, from applications to art. Chapters 4-10 are the color usability heuristics.
Chapter 1: Why color matters
Chapter 2: How to talk color
Chapter 3: From heuristic to holistic
Chapter 4: Color should reduce cognitive load
Chapter 5: Color should say what it means (part 1)
Chapter 6: Color should say what it means (part 2)
Chapter 7: Color should be accessible
Chapter 8: Color should have a backup
Chapter 9: Less is more, most of the time
Chapter 10: Color should speak the right language
Chapter 11: Working with color: collaboration, playbooks, and more
