[IxDA Discuss] Amber and Yellow color perception

[pauric]

"Jim's suggestions about different behaviors for the colors makes the
distinction even more pronounced."

Flashing an LED actually makes it less pronounced. Less time for the eye to
perceive subtle difference in colours.  That is, flashing an LED will make
it harder to determine whether is it yellow or amber compared with having it
on all the time.

If you do use flashing, our researched found LEDs needed to be on for 30ms
to be registered properly. We didnt look in to how long it needed to be on
too tell the difference between and amber or yellow.  As a general rule we
keep the number of states displayed via LED to a minimum, they're a little
bit 'binary' if you understand what I mean.

I think asking the user to build a matrix of green/amber/yellow/blue/red
over solid/flashing and have them translate states or meaning through that
matrix, could be phrased as an engineering based interaction solution.



On 2/3/07, Jeff Howard <id at howardesign.com> wrote:
>
> This is one of the few cases where George Miller's 1956 study "The
> Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" actually applies. Based on
> Miller's research I'd say that yes, most people are physiologically
> capable of distinguishing between yellow and amber. But it's still
> going to pose a problem.
>
> http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/
>
> Miller was studying the human ability to distinguish values along
> unidimensional and multi-dimensional scales. Things related to color,
> sound and taste for example. Basically, he found that most people have
> the ability to reliably distinguish (by memory) about seven variations
> on any particular scale. Some people are better or worse at this, so
> the range is generally between five and nine variations. For example,
> most people can distinguish around seven musical tones on a scale and
> identify them when played without making mistakes.
>
> With color it's not as clear-cut since colors often vary along
> multiple dimensions (hue, value and satuation) but given a set of
> colors that vary only by hue ranging from yellow to amber, people in
> a psychology experiment could, on average, distinguish about seven
> different variations in yellow/amber. Given that you only need to
> make them distinguish two variations, that's well within most
> people's perceptual threshold.
>
> But outside of psychology labs people aren't in the habit of making
> those kind of discriminations unless they know it's important. Most
> of the time it's not, so people gloss over the details. Think of
> traffic lights. Older traffic signals use a yellowish green for
> "go" while newer lights use blue-green LEDs. If you asked them,
> most people could tell the difference but they've probably never
> thought about it. There weren't any publc service announcement to
> teach people about the new blue-green lights because we're used to
> those subtle variations being meaningless.
>
> If you want a reference for how people _really_ behave (as opposed to
> what they're capable of) then I'd suggest the writings of Herbert
> Simon on the concept of "chunking".
>
> http://www.albany.edu/~dkw42/s6_chunked.html<http://www.albany.edu/%7Edkw42/s6_chunked.html>
>
> In "How Big is a Chunk" (1974) Simon describes our tendency not to
> attend to the overwhelming complexity of existence, but to mentally
> "chunk" phenomenon into common patterns. I'd say that a relevant
> example of "chunking" behavior is our ability to see the complexity
> of the color spectrum as only seven (Miller) colors with the mnemonic
> ROYGBIV. (And as far as I'm concerned you can throw out indigo--it
> always seemed unnecessary.)
>
> Getting back to your problem... If you absolutely had to use yellow
> and amber, then make the distinction as pronounced as you can by
> varying the saturation or value in addition to the hue (to the extent
> that's possible with LEDs). Jim's suggestions about different
> behaviors for the colors makes the distinction even more pronounced.
> But it's safer to use some other color.
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-- 
Job type: In house
Field: Embedded & physical interfaces. Web/cli