I’ve been pondering an interesting question today. In designing a new application which displays the status of an item in three states; ‘available’, ‘unavailable’ or ‘mine’, I’ve had to think of which colours to use to indicate the state.
The team here are divided. 1/2 think that as the application needs to convey a number of states to the user, the choice of colour needs help the user build a mental model. There people are leaning towards the green is available, yellow is mine and grey is unavailable. The other 1/2 are in favour of using the brand colours (pink and blue) to convey available/unavailable. All agree that grey is a good colour for unavailable.
My preference is for the yellow/green approach but I’m certainly no marketer.
What do you think? Is there a reason why you would favour one approach over the other?
Hi Rob
This is a good question. So much so that I’m going to respond with a question.
In your context, is the “available/unavailable” irrelevant if the object is “mine”? If so, I would make status a toggle /between/ the former and the latter.
In terms of colours, how about something a little different:
- Available = green
- Unavailable = grey
- Mine = blue (brand version)
My reasoning for the colours is as follows. Green is associated (in our culture, at least) with good, go, etc. Grey is the standard for unavailable things (e.g. links) on the Web.
For “mine”, I stayed away from yellow because it’s too traffic-light-like (green, yellow, red) and may suggest more “maybe” than “mine”. I also wouldn’t choose your corporate pink because it is so strongly associated with your brand that it might suggest “not mine but yours”. Also pink and green could pose problems for people with red/green colour blindness (the most common type). Blue, on the other hand, contrasts nicely with green (depending on the hues, of course) while still being a corporate colour.
I wouldn’t use just pink, blue and grey because pink and blue /both/ don’t have a strong place in a user’s mental model other than association with your company. Giving them green gives them at least one handle with something they are familiar with. And if you want users to buy things that are available, then green is a nice reinforcing colour.
Hope this helps. Would be a good question for IxDA: http://ixda.org/.
Cheers,
Jessica
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for your comments. I agree that mixing green and blue might be a nice balance of colour association and brand. Green is definately a go/good/available colour. I don’t like the pink because of its association with stop/error/you’re bad.
With regard to your question - yes, there are 3 distinct states:
Available = green or pink
Mine = yellow or blue
Unavailable = grey
I’ll have a look at green/blue to see how it sits with the design.
Cheers
Rob