Design in the Wild: GWU Score Board
Sometimes when I am out and about, I notice peculiarities about the design of our every day things. We had some company in the previous weekend, and one of the places we went was to the George Washington Univ. vs. Duquesne Univ. basketball game. I can’t say it was my top priority to do that weekend, but college ball is certainly more exciting to watch than the NBA.
Anyway, as we were watching the game I noticed something weird with the score board. Here is a picture. Do you notice anything a little strange?
If you think about it for a while, you might notice it. Then again, you may not notice it at all (just as the manufacturers didn’t). Let’s take a moment to think about color and its strength in conveying a message. The meaning and experience of color is deeply rooted in culture. In most of the Western world, green means go, red means no, blue is calming, green is relaxing, yellow is positive, black is negative, and so on.
Here is a closeup of what I am looking at:
NO is an abbreviation for Player Number, displayed in yellow. F is an abbreviation for Foul, displayed in green. PTS is an abbreviation for Points, displayed in red. The negative item (Foul) is displayed in a positive color (green), while the positive item (Points) is displayed in a negative color (red). Also, the number of team fouls is in a matching green and the number of team points is in the matching red. It almost seems as if the color should be reversed.
Strange, isn’t it?
What I find more problematic there is the way that things are asymetric around the central image:
abc |—| abc
rather than
abc |—| cba
that might be just me of course.
hmmm…. I am not certain that it really is that red == bad. It seems that red is used as the level of most attention- for example stop signs, and emergency stop buttons in elevators, even in the fire alarm on the walls of institutions. Yes, the situations which calls for those particular examples is usually unfavorable to say the least, the high attention grabbing red is not bad. So the manufactureres want to draw the eye to one thing more than the other, they make it red, at least that’s why I didn’t see the same thing you did.
Slightly OT, but what is often forgotten about the colour blue is it is the colour that the eye least responds to, which makes it difficult to read text written in blue-on-black. The number of neon signs I have seen in blue suggests that many people don’t realise this. I’ve even seen seat numbering in movie theatres that was back-illuminated in blue, making it near impossible to read in the dark.
You’re right that the design of this scoreboard is interesting though. One thing to consider for older devices is that for a long time red LEDs were much cheaper than other colours, so often red was used even when the meaning was positive (eg. power on, ready, etc.). I’m guessing that probably doesn’t apply here though.
As for yellow being positive, in security equipment yellow lights/LEDs were often used to indicate a fault/defect condition (red was commonly used for alarm, green for power). That scheme seems logical to me, although that could just be because I’m used to it.
Now, if we can just get consumer electronics manufacturers to stop using super-bright blue LEDs for everything that would definitely be a positive step in my opinion :)
I could understand the red for points, since scoreboards are traditionally all red, but the green for “foul” is just baffling. They could have reversed the orange and green at least.
Ello
Looking at the scoreboard and knowing nothing about basketball you are exactly right about the colours, when I first looked at it I assumed red was a bad score and green was a good one with no clue about yellow!
It`s amazing you noticed but I can personally guarantee that your assumption was correct, well for myself anyhow but thanks for posting it was very interesting to see how such a simple thing really is quite ingrained.
Now I know: never take a user interface expert anywhere without checking out the equipment first - they won’t enjoy a simple game if the scoreboard isn’t perfect. :) Though I guess examining the scoreboard for flaws is more interesting than watching people play sports (IMHO - a lot of people seem to enjoy it)
Of course you are not alone. I have a carpenter friend that I can’t bring to certain restaurants - the food might be great, but all they can think is how bad the trim job is.
It would be more effective if fouls be in a very distinct color (like red) so it would be noticed easily by the player itself. Scores can be green and the player number color can still be the same.
Over here in Manila, our traffic system is pretty much the same as the rest of the world, but what is distinctive is the color they use for road fences and other barricades needed to fix the flow of traffic. They use Pink. Even the uniforms of civilian traffic personnel have hues of pink coupled with the standard blue.