Showerthought: My color blind nephew couldn't read my chart at a family cookout.

I was showing off a data chart I made for a project at work, using red and green bars. My 10 year old nephew, who has red-green color blindness, asked me what the 'gray and gray' bars meant. That hit me... I'd been using those colors for years without a second thought. I looked it up right then and saw that about 8% of men have some form of color vision deficiency. Now I'm trying to learn better ways to show data, like using patterns or labels on the bars themselves. Has anyone else had a simple moment that showed a big gap in their design thinking?

3 comments

3 Comments

pat5401mo ago

Honestly adding text labels directly on the bars is the easiest fix, saves everyone the guesswork.

the_blake27d ago

Ugh, yes. It's wild how often we miss the simple stuff. We get so deep into making the chart look "clean" that we forget the whole point is to be understood. That hiking map story is a perfect example, it happens all the time. Just slap the numbers right on there and call it a day.

matthewbarnes1mo ago

Yeah the "gray and gray" thing is such a wake up call. I had a similar moment making a map for a friend's hiking group, using red lines for trails. He told me later it just looked like a bunch of brown squiggles to him. I felt so bad, I mean it just never crossed my mind.