Color Sensitivity in Digital Interfaces Designed for Elderly People

As ageing brings harmful effects to human vision, this study’s goal was to verify, in seniors, what kind of problems could occur with humans’ visual perception of color and with their ability to distinguish between visual elements that are differentiated by color. Because in digital artifacts designed for seniors, color can be used as a means of distinction between interaction resources (for example items of a navigation menu), it is vital to be able to correctly identify and distinguish between the used colors. Therefore, a literature review of reference research in the field of digital interface design for seniors was conducted, where it was mapped what is already described about these problems in seniors. Then, starting from an iconography set that had been designed for the menu of a digital application, and that used color as an element of segmentation of the contents it displayed, a sample of seniors was recruited for testing it. Their perception and sensitivity to the colors used in the icons was tested, in order to understand if they could identify them and if they could distinguish them from each other, when displayed together. Given results that diverged from the reviewed literature, a second phase of testing was conducted that allowed to deepen the results of this study and confirm some hypotheses that had raised with the testing’s first phase. The final results confirmed partial divergences with the literature reviewed and also provided some insights that are presented and discussed in this paper.