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Vent: I swapped my red and green error states for blue and orange and my boss asked if something was wrong
Last month I had to pick between keeping the red error text and green success text on our checkout form at work in Portland, or switching to blue for errors and orange for success. I went with blue and orange because about 1 in 12 men can't tell red from green, and two days later my boss pinged me asking why the form looked so weird. Turns out the orange reads as a warning color to him and he thought every successful order was a problem. Anyone here got a success/error color pair that actually survives both colorblind users and picky coworkers?
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the_aaron3d ago
Oh man, I feel this one deep. I read a thing a while back from the Nielsen Norman Group about color and accessibility, and their main point was that color alone should never carry the meaning, you always need a second signal like an icon or text label. Blue and orange is actually a solid combo for colorblind users since it's the most common pair that holds up, but the problem is orange screams "caution" to pretty much everyone else. What they suggested was keeping your success and error text but adding a checkmark or an X next to it so the color is just backup, not the whole message. That way your boss sees the checkmark and knows it's fine even if the orange bugs him. You could also try blue for info, green with a check for success, and red with an icon for errors, since the icon does the heavy lifting. The color pair matters way less than people think once you stop relying on it by itself.
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