Color your website: Use of colors on the web

Abstract

In spite of the wealth of information available on designing international user interfaces, it is not easy for web designers to acquire a deep understanding of culturally appropriate user interface design. There is a lack of tools that assist web developers in creating culturally appropriate user interfaces. In our paper we present an empirical study that identifies culture-specific web interface design elements for a number of countries using semi-automated approach, in order to incorporate the results into a cultural interface design advisor tool. The paper presents results of the pilot study on web design color preferences for a number of countries. Results show that along with ten colors that are used universally in website design for all countries studied, country-specific color palettes could be identified. Examples of these "preferred" palettes are presented in the paper along with suggestions on how designers can work with such palettes creating culturally appropriate websites. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.