Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Applications of Color in Visualizations
Colin Ware, in the latter part of Ch. 4 (pp. 119-144) talks about the use of color in visualizations. He presents a number of strategies, and illustrates them with examples. At the end of the chapter (pp. 143-144) he summarizes a number of points that bear on the design of visualizations. Use this post to either discuss his points and examples, or to show new examples that illustrate his points.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think that the use of color in visualizations is one of the most important aspects. There are many factors that we need to account for, such as the difference between what the image appears like on the computer screen, vs. how it appears when projected on the screen, how bright it is and whether we are using the right contrasts to make it easier for the viewer to take in the information that we are trying to present.
ReplyDeleteI think it is an important topic, because, as mentioned in class and in Ware's book, even standard templates for PowerPoint presentations violate some of the most important rules, such as not placing black text on dark blue background.
Ware also talks about primary colors - Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue that are "hard-wired into the brain as primaries." In class we learned that there are languages that have as little as 2 names for distinct primary colors - black and white. If there is to be a next color added to the language it is red, next come green or yellow, and next comes blue. I believe that the reason that if there's only 3 basic colors in a language, red is one of them, because it is an installation in our brain that red represents danger, and according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, safety, meaning security of the body and health, come right after most simple physiological needs, such as breathing and eating. So it makes sense why red would be the next color to acquire a name. I think that knowing how people react to certain colors is very useful when making a visualization, i.e. if we wanted to attract our viewers' attention to a certain part of the visualization, we simply need to highlight it with red (or color it red), and it will be the first thing they notice.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete