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Keep Colors and Stay COOLOR 

This was a very fun project in exploring the depth of personal informatics in deploying data measurement, collection, and game design strategies. Our group was interested in finding a way to collect colors throughout a person's journey and potentially extract meanings from these colors. 

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We created COOLOR, which is a personal informatics Android application that aims to motivate people to be present about colors everyday, and capture delightful/meaningful moment of daily life. Users will extract colors from pictures which they feel best showcase what they want to see in their lives. These colors then can be used to create visualization of those moments. We believe they will be motivated to seek out even more colors to add to the range they see through the application.

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Solution at a Glance:

DESIGN PROCESS

1. Color Theory Research

We wanted to understand how color affect our lives and how they are currently being used. Thus, we conducted literature reviews and research studies in related topics. We found that: 

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  • People learn to associate emotions and colors very early
     

  • Some associations are universal

    • Light blue = energy, enthusiasm

    • Dark blue = quiet, subtle
       

  • Some are cultural

    • Red = danger

    • Green = environmentalism

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Moreover, there is a strong association in connecting colors and emotions in the field of Advertising, Design, Art, and Therapy. 

2. Participatory Design Exercises

A. Daily Color Journals 

We recruited 4 users to collect colors for a week and gave each of them a different assignment: Words, Image, Emotions, and Events

B. Dear Data Visualization 

Inspired by Giorgia Lupi's "Dear Data" project, we then recruited 20+ grad students for a design exercise with the following instructions: 

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  1. Get a paper, fold it in half (like a card)

  2. On one side of the card, look back on your spring break, and for each day, write down a color and some short context you’d like to add to the color

  3. On the other side, create a visualization for the whole of your spring break using the colors you’ve used

3. Ideating & Wireframing

From the design exercises, we found that people are attracted to using personal colors to visualize something significant; hence, with that aspect, we went on to ideate and sketch different ways to emphasize that effect. 

4. Design Decisions

A. Data Measurement Strategy

Our group spent some time developing different measurement and collection strategies for users to record colors, including but not limited to image extraction, color by association, and self-reporting.

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To keep the app simple simple: user collect one dominant color for each day.

 

Approach: user takes and uploads an image

To make the context rich,  the app also records from that image:

  • Location

  • Date

  • Weather

B. Behavior Change Strategy

With the goal of urging users to be conscious about colors in life every day and spend more time reflecting on life and the way colors can affect outlook.

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Our strategy is to allow users to explore colors in their lives with different visualizations

With the goal of urging users to collect everyday 

Our strategy is to award users with fancier painting to color with when they use Coolor more frequently

We also award users with fancier tools to color with when they use Coolor more frequently

5. Reflections

For me, while the project was really fun to see how people could collect colors and play with them. The greatest challenge to execute the project was thinking about how a colorblind individual could still be engage through our app. Personally, after we ran the second design exercise one individual came to me and said “I just wanted to let you know, I am colorblind so your exercise meant nothing to me. I think you should think about what implications your app may send”

 

For me it was challenging to receive such feedback, as I personally highly value accessibility and inclusive design—and to be call out of the spot, it was really a learning moment to check my own assumptions. Our team spent lots of time discovering different solutions (i.e. using patterns, shapes). It was difficult to include in the final design due to the time that we had and hence it is sort of a regret for us. We did show our ideas during the final design, but it would have been very helpful if we could also test these ideas with colorblind individuals.
 

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