Colour selection strategies in colour design

Our evolving hypothesis is that a colour-picker interface designed to challenge the novice user will better connect with their creative abilities and help develop their understanding of the interrelated digital colour challenges. An interface approach underpinned by a philosophy of engaging-in-use rather than ease-of-use may help to better rationalize a new user’s colour-selection process, thus improving their initial productivity and creativity within the digital design environment. This study challenges the established HCI (Human Computer Interaction) convention that consistently prescribes to a user-interface-strategy embracing ease-of-use. It considers if this ideal is necessarily the right approach for creative software application, assessing colour-pickers as the primary example. Interesting results are emerging from experimental work with an early prototype colour-picker tool that exploits our ongoing research into intuitive understanding of colour. The focus of this work is the creative colour selection process and not colour management per se, however it is recognised that the relationship between these two design and technical processes is not always mutually exclusive.