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Your client has a flaw in his interface design in that he used only color
to distinguish the differences among messages. There should be something
else to distinguish items on a screen because all users cannot see all
colors, and because colors do not display the same way on all machines.
That notwithstanding, I'm not sure of the effect of color screen captures
on page after page of a book. It always sounded appealing to me to do a
color book, but it could be a bit much. I would suggest that you minimize
the use of other colors on the page if you do use color screen captures.
If I find anything else in my human factors books, I'll let you know.
Arleta Wohlrab
wohlraba -at- bscc -dot- bls -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: Leslie McKendry-Smith [SMTP:McKendrySmith -at- MBNET -dot- MB -dot- CA]
Sent: Friday, September 05, 1997 10:55 AM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: B&W or Colour
My client and I are on " the horns of a dilemma" and need
advice on whether or not to print a user's guide in colour
or B&W.
Here's the situation...
I have written a user's guide for a remote control and
monitoring application that runs in Window. The manual
contains screen snapshots of each window and dialog box as
well as examples of the application's tool icons.
The developers used colour in the interface to reinforce
messages. For example, the background of a high priority
alarm message would be red. Colour is also used to show
whether or not a remote device is connected to the network.
Now the problem...
My client is toying with the idea of print the entire manual
in colour (Cost is not an issue.) but, both of us are unsure
of whether this is a good idea.
On the positive side, I think that colour printing would
demonstrate how colour is used to in the application.
On the negative side, I worry that page after page of colour
graphics would distract readers and after a while lose its
impact.
What do you think? Are there other advantages or
disadvantages? Does anyone know of any usability research
results on using colour in user's guides.
I subscribe to the digest version, so I'd appreciate it if
you responded directly to me. I'd be happy to post a
summary of responses later next week.
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