What colors?

Just a quick blog here...mostly off the back of thinking about the Hex game. I was thinking from a usability perspective what colors would be best for games where both players need the colours to stand out when looking at one of them. For example when player 1 is white then looking at the board he/she should see white as being dominant, and for black he/she should see black as dominant.

If anyone bothers reading these blogs please add some comments about what colours are used in the games that you play.

Yellow and Red - Connect 4
Orange and Blue - Make 5

What else is there?


Just to relate this to HCI sometimes you don't want just one section to stick out, but you want the user to not be distracted by other parts of your interface when focusing on one section. That is one of the reasons why scrolling text is very very bad HCI. Yet some sites insist on these java applets which scroll text and flash colors at you. Luckily most sites have moved away from the philosophy that because I can I should.

One idea would be to use the mouse as a pointer to what the user is focusing on and then change other parts of the interface depending on that. For example if I were to hover my pointer over an article on a page with 3 or 4 such posts then the program should recognise this and grey out other areas. This would enhance the focus of the user. However, it could also be very annoying as it would mean that to see something my mouse would constantly have to be in the right place.