Projects/Usability/HIG/Color

Purpose

Color is a basal quality in human perception. Color can be used for communication, it is a very efficient way to direct attention, and significance can assigned to an object with color. However, color is a historical and cultural phenomenon, and is subject of continuous aesthetical changes. Furthermore, it should be taken into consideration that a rather high percentage of population has a perception disorder ranging from difficulties to discriminate between red and green to complete color blindness.

Guidelines

• Choose colors by selecting the appropriate theme color or system color. You can use the CheckColorRoles theme to detect bugs regarding the use of system colors in your application.
• Never use color as a primary method of communication, but as a secondary method to reinforce meaning visually.
• Make foreground color contrasting to background.
• Consider accessibility for users with color vision deficiency (~5% population).

Implementation

KColorScheme provides methods to pick readable colors based on the type of message to convey.