Comment by jmull
19 days ago
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.
> A lot of the colors are arbitrary, so don't really impart information.
The color may not carry any information content by itself, but it still helps distinguish between icons that use different colors.