Melih Kirlidog, Marmara University, Turkey

Although there is a large body of literature on research into colour in human-computer interaction, the overwhelming majority of the literature emphasises the cognition by computer users. However, colour is also important in this interaction when users manually type data into a computer. This paper investigates the effect of colour combinations on manual data typing. To this end, three experiments were conducted where the subjects were requested to read several texts with different colour combinations and re-type them in the same screen. Typing accuracy and speed is measured as the dependent variable across different colour combinations. Three experiments were conducted as such. In the first experiment, display and input windows were close to each other and in the second one they were located in the opposite ends of the screen. The third experiment was a subset of the first one with reversed foreground and background colours. It was found that different colour combinations had varying effects on data typing performance and proximity of the display and input windows was not a significant factor for typing accuracy in a 17-inch screen. The effect of reversing the foreground and background colours was inconclusive with the colour combinations used.

Human-computer interaction (HCI), Colour Combinations, Data Typing, Manual Data Entry