Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tanmay Saxena

Quite strangely sometimes the personal love for colors seems to impact the color combination and hierarchy for all of their products. This brought one very good issue amongst us, I thought about why not discuss it here as well.

Colors, it’s the core component that can make a screen and interface feel lively. It’s the best aid that would not alter the interface structure at all. Though this is the perfect tool at the designers’ disposal to make the page lively, is it really worth it making use of myriad colors everywhere on the interface. I would say No.

Colors would only suit spaces and places that need some attention. The contrast theory is the perfect example of knowing how the foreground colors behave and come out on the contrasting colored surface backgrounds. Contrasts can be used to pop-out elements that actually need attention and need to be looked at. Mostly it is used to achieve the ‘CTA — Call To Action’ option on an interface. The negative space provides enough space to make sure that the colors do pop out in the best possible way.

The issue arises if we integrate the colors very close to the area of prime importance for the user, let’s say putting colorful icons around a medium blog, this actually seems pretty to you, but in reality is the worst distraction the reader can actually think of. This doesn’t allow the user to concentrate on the reading part as the colors pop out from the white interface that is present on the medium blogging site.

An interface should actually focus on presenting the information the user is looking for rather than having fancy icons and colors distributed all around the interface. The rest of the area that is not of much importance should feel transparent and that too in a distraction-free manner.

For any good interface, it is best suited if you can create it using not more than 3–4 colors, the less — the better. This will in turn cause less distraction and the interface will be able to focus on areas that it should actually focus. Grouping data and marking sectors with the color shades of the color being used in the interface could actually give a consistent feel and still keep the interface as close to simple as possible. Apple in its design process follows the simplistic approach of having white spaces on the iOS front more often as then the information that comes in the screen gets more attention as the colors are contrasting to one another, also with the flat colors already catching the eye and people going for them, it actually makes the information focus friendly rather than the user looking all around a fancy colored screen before actually looking at the main area of interest.

So, my suggestion would be stay low on color count when it comes to interfaces until its seriously needed. Keep it simple, keep it clean, as ‘Simple is the new Modern!’

Less Colors — Less Distraction was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Less Colors — Less Distraction

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