Investigation of eye-catching colors using eye tracking

An eye tracking experiment was conducted to investigate the relationship between eye gazing movements and the color attributes to support the creation of effective communication and increase aesthetic satisfaction. With consideration to the context of smart phones, the study focused on icon arrays, and thus each stimulus set was composed of 25 color square patches arrayed in the format of a 5 by 5 grid. The experiment was divided into three parts, each examining one specific attribute of color, while controlling its other attributes. Fifteen college students were recruited, among whom all partook in all three parts. In Part I, hue difference was examined. Each stimulus set contained 25 hues under a fixed tone. It was revealed that subjects were more attentive to warm colors than to cool colors, particularly when warm colors were arranged along the horizontal and vertical axes; In Part II, the experiment dealt with tone difference. 25 tone variations for red, green and blue were provided as stimulus sets. However, the result indicated that changes in tone does not have a significant influence on subjects’ initial attention; Lastly, in Part III, combinations of colors were examined to determine whether color contrast influenced participants’ attention in a manner different from that of single colors. Among them, icons with complementary contrast gained the greatest attention. Throughout the experiments, the background was applied with either black or white; however a contrast effect between background and foreground was not noticeable.