UX of Yellow

Designers: Anya Li, Bala Chander, Effy Lui, Ella Wilson,Vicki Sun, Ava Shepherd

Brief

For this brief we had to design an experience that captures the value of yellow. The biggest challenge for us was finding a way we could express the value of yellow without going for properties that we felt were obvious and overdone. For this project we had to use two research methods; creating a create a creative tool kit and doing an artefact analysis. Both of these research methods were brand new to me.

After receiving the brief our group straight away got to work. We started brainstorming any and all things that we associated with the colour yellow. Feelings, items, shows, food, animals etc. From this we were able to create a comprehensive list of ideas that we could work from and use as inspiration for our artefact analysis.

"While colours themselves could be standardised, the meaning of colour has turned out to be less easily standardised. Goethe (1970) called yellow ‘serene, gay and softly exciting’ (p. 307)" (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2002, p.353)

Artefact Analysis

As a group we decided that the best way to move forward was to try and all do an artefact analysis each and then report back to the group the most interesting findings. This way we could all explore an area that interests us and keep our options open. By doing this we then had an analysis on a yellow smiley balloon, insanity, gold, a pinwheel and paint.

To me yellow is a colour that represents youthfulness and happiness, two emotions that made me think of a child with a happy balloon. I thought this could be an interesting artefact to choose as it isn't directly a yellow item. However it hold strong associations to the feeling of yellow.

Artefact Analysis .pdf

Download PDF • 184KB

On Monday once we had all done an analysis we met up as a group online to discuss our individual findings and see if any of the information we found would inspire us for our project.

Despite everything we researched being very different we realised that our common ground was the emotions felt with our items. Inspired by the story of the 'Yellow Wallpaper' (Gilman, 1892) we fell into the idea of insanity. This was as additionally in the the text "The culture of yellow: Or, the visual politics of late modernity" it discusses how the term "Yellow house" used to refer to an insane asylum (Doran, 2013)

Inspiration story for insanity

Creative Toolkit

After talking to Al about our idea he suggested that the concept of insanity might be a bit too broad and that we should try and narrow it down to one key component of frustration. We agreed with this comment and decided we would focus in on frustration instead. Once we settled on this idea we decided to meet and begin working on our creative tool kit. When brainstorming ideas for frustration we recognised that one easy way to cause frustration is to fail to complete a simple task (Eg. paying for a parking ticket but the machine is not working)

This lead us to making a yellow jigsaw for our toolkit. It was made up of simple shapes that would never fit together perfectly. The goal was to make the user feel frustrated. Anya additionally mentioned a film called "Sunshine" where the sound of the sun is overwhelmingly represented in the film. This lead us to also consider what yellow and frustration would sound like. Could we cause frustration to users through audio alone?

The next day we decided to test our puzzle on people in our class for feedback. However, surprisingly the feedback was generally very positive, people were having fun. They enjoyed that the puzzle was unlike traditional ones. This promoted us to try our second puzzle we had planned that would be almost impossible to do.

Cutting the puzzle

Zhe trying our puzzle

Effy and Anya then went back to LCC to test out the new game we made. This time people would have to make a beaded bracelet. However it would gradually get harder in stages. First you have to wear some gloves, then also have to wear a face cone to distort your vision.

New game

Ranga getting frustrated

Interim Presentation and feedback

On Thursday we thought our presentation was going well until Rylee finished our experience and said that is was so fun she wanted to do it again. This is when it hit me, we had made the same mistake as last week with boredom. This was another experiment trying to prove our theory. However, like boredom you can not force people to be frustrated.

We also got lots of feedback about how the connection to yellow is a bit lost and they do not know how it correlates.

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Week 2

Back to the drawing board

After reflecting on our presentation last week, we decided we would move on from the notion of frustration as the link was too weak. This is when we went back to our other idea of sound and explore how we could show yellow through audio.

Yellow Sound

Vicki found this graphic about the different waves / frequencies created by different colours. This was what inspired us to learn more about the different waves of different shades of yellow, and how it could correspond to different sounds.

P5 Coding

After completing all our research and had settled on our idea, we realised that the next step was to do coding. This was a bit overwhelming as none of us had much experience with coding before. However with the help of the creative lab we were able to learn everything we needed. Anya and Bala started the code by taking the average value of RGB colours when detected by a webcam. This lead us to then be able to create a sound from the values. We needed to use Polysynth and Mapping to then express the sounds we wanted. I joined them the next day to finish the code and allow the webcam to capture an image every second so that we could create a melody from different yellows.

Testing different yellow sounds

It was then time to make the suit! We wanted to make the user the instrument that would control the melody. Therefore we decided to paint a suit with various different yellows so that the camera could track them and make sounds accordingly.

Video of sound working on sound (Click to hear audio)

Final Presentation

Presentation day was when everything went a bit wrong. Technology was working against us. due to technical difficulties we were not able to show our final product accurately. We had to rely on people using their phones to play sound. While this generally worked it was very disappointing. Additionally we received generally very positive feedback about this concept and execution of the idea, so it was even more disheartening that it did not work. One other comment we received was to push it further with the sound. How would it be different if we used bird sounds for example.

What I learnt from this project

The biggest take away from this project was to always test your work in the medium you will be presenting (In this case on the big screen). However additionally, I think this project showed me that its good to take risks even if they do not quite work as intended. If we had played it safe like week one we would never have created an experience like this one, and while it was a shame it didn't work as intended, I really loved this project and enjoyed doing something completely different.

Next Project: UX of Skin

Bibliography

Causes of color. Webexhibits.com. Accessed 08 November 2021:

http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/5B.html

Doran, S., 2013. The culture of yellow: Or, the visual politics of late modernity. A&C Black.

Gilman, C., 1981, The Yellow Wallpaper. Virago Press

Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. 2002. ‘Colour as a semiotic mode: notes for a grammar of colour’, Visual Communication, 1(3), pp. 343–368. doi: 10.1177/147035720200100306.

Sunshine (film), 2007, Danny Boyle