Impacts of luminance contrast on effectiveness of multiple line graphs

Abstract

Previous color research suggested that high contrast may be useful for nominal information coding in information design. However, empirical studies on the impacts of high contrast on the graphreader's perception towards usefulness of the multiple line graph have been rarely examined. This study conducted an experiment to evaluate graphs using two different color combinations. The participants perceived the high luminance contrast Red-Green-Blue graph is more useful than the low luminance contrast Orange-Green-Cyan graph for complicated tasks using multiple lines. There was no difference of perceived usefulness across simple tasks including using a single line. Despite these results, participants' actual task completion time shows there is no difference among different graph reading complexity with different color contrast groups.