Comments on: Can You See Your Project’s Dashboard?

By: Jim MacLennan

Jim MacLennan — Fri, 04 May 2007 10:01:23 +0000

(couldn’t get a trackback to work, so here’s an excerpt from my post, referencing yours)
Many applications have some form of status indicator icons available for reports and displays. The visual analog of an LED indicator on a dashboard doesn’t quite work, however; as Rothman points out, colors can get transformed into shades of grey that are tough to differentiate. And it’s not just the color-blind; a more practical issue is the availability of reasonable quality color for the final display…I

By: Jim Bullock

Jim Bullock — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:43:20 +0000

I learned this one when I built some factory-floor diagnostic gear. They loved that we could figure out and even localize many manufacturing defects. Noisy, dirty factory floor, and they automatically ask about the full range of visual acuity - and other capabilities - that the allow on the floor.
Would that we paid as much attention to these things when dealing with knowledge workers.
We had sound already, which they liked. You can work with color discrimination by using a fill pattern or a shape. I like green stars for “OK” and a red “X” for bad, with hatch mark fill for the X. Fill patterns and shapes also look different on B & W printouts.
The trick is to go multi-modal for important information that people have to get. That also goes for other kinds of modes. Some people respond better to tables of numbers, while others want to see a shape or graph, while others won’t get it unless you tell them a story - a sequence in time, in words.
When someone complais about the burden of doing this, or even simply the time they are wasting presenting information several ways (always said: “You are wasting time . . . “, BTW) well you’ve even learned something yourself in the bargain. It’s good to know when someone is “folks not like me blind” too.

By: Siddharta

Siddharta — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 10:55:37 +0000

There is a nice chart over here: http://www.visibone.com/color/chart_847.gif that shows how the colours look for a person with colour blindness (the small mini-reproduction at the bottom left)