When Red Means Good, Bad, or Canada: Exploring People’s Reasoning for Choosing Color Palettes

Abstract

Color palette selection is an essential aspect of visualization design, influencing data interpretation and evoking emotions in the viewer. Rules of thumb grounded in perceptual science and visual arts generally form the basis of recommendation tools to support color assignment, but palette design is more nuanced than optimizing for perceptual tasks. In this work, we investigate how the general public reconciles the varied facets of color design in visualization. Does their decision-making align with established rules of thumb? What factors do they take into consideration? Through a crowd-sourced study with 63 participants, we find that the majority of palette choices are perceptually motivated, but other factors such as semantic associations and bias also play a role. We identify some flaws in participant reasoning, highlight clashes in opinions, and present some implications for future work in this space.