User evaluation of a virtual colour laboratory as a tool for demonstrating colour appearance

The aim with our research is to contribute to a better understanding of how colour research findings can be conveyed to a broader target audience, using digital media. This article presents a user study focusing on the popular science project the Virtual Colour Laboratory (VCL). The VCL is an interactive webpage for presenting and demonstrating existing research results on spatial colour phenomena. It was initiated and carried out with the intention of spreading knowledge of colour appearance and colour perception to a wider target audience, from the viewpoint of practice based architectural colour research. The VCL enables the user to investigate actively how colours appear in different situations, and provides information on relevant literature and links for further studies. In a questionnaire study, carried out in 2014, two groups of users including architecture students and professionals within architecture, art and design evaluated the usability of the VCL with a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The predominant result showed that the VCL generally was highly appreciated. However, the results also show differences in how the two groups experienced the visual and written content of the stations in the VCL, as well as differences in how they experienced the VCL as a whole. This highlights the importance of adjusting levels of information depending on the target group, as well as presents advantages and difficulties of showing research on spatial colour appearance on the web using digital visualization as a medium for presentation. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 41, 611–625, 2016