The Drive of Colors, or A Greyer Shade of Grey
I’ve explored once how software apps/products appeal to emotions, and how this emotional imprint affects our willingness to spend time in a software product or in an app. Why should this utterly non-technical stuff matter at all to those of us who create software? Emotions and personal perceptions play a far larger role than one can imagine as people decide if they are going to stick with some app. A software or an app may seem a perfect fit to the rational side if it does for us what we want it to do, but in the world where many software apps come with about the same set of features, it’s those several tiny grains of sand that could make the scales tip towards the very final “yes” or “no” from a user.
Let me give an example from personal experience. Back in the day, I used to spend quite a lot of time “inside” a certain software product. The product was a work management software; and there was an earlier version, and a newer version. A newer version of the software was intended to be very visual, customizable, and flexible, with the aim to cover each and every need in work management for any development process. But — since the employees just as the clients were given some leeway — I still preferred to use the earlier version for my own tasks, despite the fact that it wasn’t as cool as the newer one. The reason? I really don’t like grey as the background color. Compare the UI color palette from the earlier version:
and from the newer version:
I was worried if something’s wrong with me and researched on how colors influence our productivity. The difference that proved to be a game-changer was in the plain sight: the background color. It turned out that I’m used to having white as a screen background more than I was able to realize consciously. In the newer version, the background color was grey-ish, and the color of cards could be customized, with mashups, but by default a card was white against the grey background. Plus, the cards were often colored into a darker shade of grey against a lighter grey background. That was too much of grey to me. Grey is a neutral color, and with the neutrality in the background all the time, I didn’t feel comfortable inside the UI. The grey’s neutrality has no drive, and it wasn’t encouraging me to stay in the newer version’s board view (or a timeline view, or a list view) for long. I felt safer and more comfortable in the familiar reality of the white background with the greyish cards for some reason. This could be linked to the fact that when we start something new, and we are particularly inspired about something, we’re talking about the color “white”. We have whiteboards on the walls. We have white sheets of paper, not grey ones. The whiteness is encouraging, it says : “Go ahead, play with this thing, change it!” After all, Medium, the publishing platform, gives us lots of white thus encouraging us to speak up! At least, that’s what comes to my mind as I attempt to rationalize these feelings.
Grey and various shades of grey have been trending. This color is generally unobtrusive and just neutral, as a smile of a stranger. I have nothing against a tinge of grey, but solid grey background made me strain myself more than needed for the work. And, I would have wanted this software to encourage and energize me with the freshness and newness of the white. Grey, however, seemed to be draining the productive energy from me, not sustaining it. I’m not sure if this is only me, perhaps someone else would have a different perception of this color. I’m certain, though, that if I’m supposed to be mentally sharp, as opposed to spending time leisurely, the solid grey background is taxing. A piece of grey ingrained into white once in a while would be OK. But not solid grey.
Do you have a story to share as of what makes you stick with a software or with an app? Some story that, in your opinion, might provide an insight to those of us who do UX/UI design? Your Q-Blog needs you :)
Related:
Imperatives in User Experience Design
This article has been re-written from an earlier story.
