Sung-Wook Ju and Kyeongah Jeong, two master candidates of CED Lab made a poster presentation entitled as “Changing the Color Attributes of Icons to Inform of the Application Status” on the IEEE- International Symposium of Consumer Electronics (ISCE 2014), held in Jeju. This study explored what relationship was formed between change in attribute of icon’s color and its implicit message. 

Abstract

This study explores what relationship is formed between change in attribute of icon’s color and its implicit message. In the user study we employed 5 well known App icons and manipulated the color attributes to result 16 color variations for each of the App icons. As color alterations, the HSV color system was facilitated, and a total of 16 variations were created, including hue, lightness, saturation, and opacity variations. We collected 6 typical messages related to App usage and asked the participants to select any of the 16 color variations that match the given message. The results unfolded three findings: First, when the app is broken, an icon would become dark; Second, when the App is used less, an icon would become translucent; Last, when the App is used a lot, the hue of an icon would be shifted toward red. In addition some more practical implications are discussed.

Full text in Proc. of IEEE- ISCE2014