Nicky Hope Experimental Weather Interface COP3 Practical Design Boards
Concept To create a weather prediction UI in a range of colour schemes in order to assess the real world impact of colour on how a design makes people feel.
San Francisco
Design Principles A contemporary, minimalist aesthetic was employed in order to encourage user focus on the colours used in the design, rather than iconography, typefaces etc. Subtle variations in design elements were used only to reinforce the intended emotional/personality interpretration, such as a serif font for the ‘luxurious’ design, or varying degrees of element transparency. A desktop-based interface allowed for more personal development in this space, following a spree of smartphone targeted design; regardless, the executed concept could easily be scaled to other form factors.
Morpeth, Northumberland
Used for the grey, melancholy version due to its surgical but clean appearance
IBM Plex Used for the blue, relaxing version due to its more rounded, friendly appearance
Baskerville
Used for the luxurious version due to its traditional, elegant appearance
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Colour ‘The colour blue can lower blood pressure, heart rate and respiration, and has a cooling effect in warm climates (Kurt, 2014)’
Colour, being the main subject matter of the project, is the most important element of the designs. Three colour schemes were developed with the intention of conveying Calming, Luxurious, and Melancholy appearances.
Luxurious
‘Gold is the color of wealth and class’ (Perry, 2017) ‘There’s a reason that common descriptive phrases of the world include “colorless,” and “grey” by sad people’ (Basu, 2017)
Calming
Melancholy
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Rain
User Research The whole point of this product was to assess what impact colour has on the way people percieve user interface design, and so it was crucial to get user feedback in order to corroborate the findings of the dissertation essay, and the hypothesis that the blue design would be perceieved as calming and relaxing, the grey as melancholy, and the gold as luxurious and elegant. Of the 43 testers questioned, 41 (95%) agreed that the blue variant had a ‘calming’ appearance. Of the 25 testers questioned, 19 agreed (76%) that the gold version had a ‘luxurious’ appearance. Of the 36 testers questioned, 26 (72%) agreed that the grey version had a ‘melancholy’ appearance. Note: Interestingly, some users agreed with each other on separate, isolated test sessions that they actually found the grey design more calming than the blue; that it made them at peace with the idea that rain was imminent, whereas the blue design gave a negative spin. This is an interesting contrast with the hypothesis; though, confoundingly, ‘feeling blue’ is an expression used to denote a negative mood.
Morpeth, Northumberland London, United Kingdom San Francisco, California
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