Comment by wtallis
19 days ago
I think it's arrogant to call this merely "arguing aesthetics" unless you can point to real usability studies that say removing color from icons does not impair their legibility and recognizability, or that reducing contrast does not similarly have detrimental effects.
What really matters is not how the screenshots look, but how easy it is to use the software in action, with low error rate and without having to spend more than a fraction of a second finding the controls you need.
If you want to claim an objective difference, then you need to be the one to substantiate that.
Anyway, we know people read symbols by shape/lines/pattern just fine without color because that's how reading works.
> What really matters is not how the screenshots look, but how easy it is to use the software in action, with low error rate and without having to spend more than a fraction of a second finding the controls you need.
Indeed. Which is why this article is mostly blowing wind.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/why-your-u...
I think you need to relate this to the case here to establish the objective correctness the previous comment claims, in terms of the screen shots we're looking at. Ridiculous, of course, but that's my point -- we're arguing about feelings not facts.
Here, for example, the colors we're discussing are the toolbar icons in the screen shots. A lot of the colors are arbitrary, so don't really impart information. E.g, shapes are characteristically green, tables aren't characteristically yellow, charts aren't characteristically blue. So that's noise, not information. You can only hope that doesn't degrade the UI too much. The yellow sticky note, on the other hand, is characteristic, so does impart information, and the color wheel is perfect. So some good ones and some bad ones. Not clear at all it's good. Now, people who use the software a lot will come to learn arbitrary associations, but, of course, that goes for any arbitrary association.
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