The effect of color differences on the detection of the target in visual search

Abstract

In order for users to find necessary information more easily, the targets should be more salient than the non-targets. In this study, we intended to find the critical color differences that could be helpful in locating the target information. Previous studies have focused on the critical color differences in the C.I.E. color system though the H.S.B color model is often the choice for a color design. Given the popularity of the H.S.B. color, the shift of a focus from the C.I.E. color system to the H.S.B. color model, which is widely used for computer graphic software, seemed quite inevitable. As a result, our experiments revealed that over 60-degree differences in hue dimension and over about 40% difference in brightness dimension resulted in faster search. However, no significant differences in the search time were found along with the saturation dimension.