- Themes: Assistance offered / Universal Design Principles
- Categories: Equitability / Iconology
- Services: Electronic parcel locker / Food delivery service / Multimodal route planner / Other / Ride or car-sharing
- Users: Designer / Developer
Be aware of colour relationship with cultural backgrounds
User Interface
Colour coding brings a lot of information to users, in part related with users’ cultural background. The use, misuse and non-use of colour can be misleading in different ways, depending on the context of use and socio-cultural environment. Always call colours into doubt, also when their meaning seems obvious (e.g., standard coupling of red and green for go/no go actions) and test them with diverse people with different backgrounds.
Visual Icons
Differently from drawings and digital art, icons’ meaning in digital mobility applications must be easily recognised, understood and recalled. Instead, oftentimes icons colours simply adhere to those chosen for companies’ visual identity. If on one hand this may apparently improve the unity and thus reduce the complexity of the interface, there is a risk of causing miscomprehension and ambiguity. Both at a global level and locally, there are specific colours linked to specific concepts or meanings. Ask local people in advance to provide feedback about your icons’ colours and overall application colour palettes to prevent related errors.