Senior user's color cognition and color sensitivity features in visual information on web-interface

Abstract

At seeing from the viewpoint of HCI, the problems relevant to the use of smart devices like mobile phone, tablet PC are not limited to young people. Each user experiences smart devices with respectively different use abilities. When senior generations use smart devices, the color environment on a device's screen may take an important role in their usability. We conducted a survey targeting some senior generations with an application program for this experiment in various color environments on a tablet PC's screen. From the survey, we found that male and female senior generations preferred for larger text size and more distinctive brightness contrast between the text's color and the background color, and also preferred for opposite color combinations. Color arrangement commonly being preferred for by seniors was clear, dynamic high-chromatic color combinations, and unfavorable arrangements were dull, static low-chromatic color combinations. However, there were gender differences in 2nd and 3rd preferring color combinations. While female seniors preferred soft-feeling color combinations, but male seniors did hard-feeling color combinations. From this survey, we identified the existence of gender differences in the preferred color combinations as well as the senior people's general visual ability. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.