Effects of background colour, polarity, and saturation on digital icon status recognition and visual search performance

Abstract

Visual design form is an important factor affecting users’ cognition of icons, which plays an important role in visual search and the perception of the status shown by icons. In the graphical user interface, the icon colour is regularly used to indicate the running state of a function. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of icon colour features on user perception and visual search performance under different background colours. There were three independent variables in the study, including background colour (white and black), icon polarity (positive and negative), and icon saturation (60, 80, and 100%). Thirty-one participants were recruited for the experiment. Task performance and eye movement results indicated that white background as well as positive polarity and 80% saturation icons brought the best performances. The findings of this study provide useful guidelines for designing more efficient and user-friendly icons and interfaces in the future.

Practitioner summary: This study was to investigate the effects of icon colour features (polarity and saturation) on user perception and visual search performance under different colour backgrounds. Task performance and eye movement results indicated that white background as well as positive polarity and 80% saturation icons brought the best performances.

Keywords:

• Display polarity
• icon polarity
• icon saturation
• visual search

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the volunteers who participated in this experiment. It is your cooperation and patience that made this paper possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (grant number 17YJCZH231), the New Engineering Construction Project of ‘Ergonomics in Health and Smart Home’ provided by Cooperative Education Program of Ministry of Education of China (grant no. 201901024002), and the ‘Smart home design theory and implementation path under the concept of ecological health care’ (project number 163104069) of Nanjing Forestry University.