Association of Colors with Software Operations

This study aims to investigate the population stereotypes of color association with software operations. Eighty university students participated in this study. In the pretest the frequently used 12 operations in software were identified. They were open, new, save, save as, undo, close, cascade, min, copy, paste, cut and delete. Then subjects were asked to associate ten colors with the twelve operations. The selected colors are red, yellow, orange, blue, green, pink, purple, gray, black and white. Chi-square tests demonstrated significant color associations for all twelve operations. The strongest associations found were black and close, black and delete, undo and gray. The colors with the high and low percentage associations, as well as some ambiguous associations were found here. The results obtained here revealed that color coding can be used in designing some operation interfaces of software. However, the strong degree of stereotypes for different combinations of color and operations should be considered and evaluated before using them.