Reblogs for 20100829

The air­port in Min­neapo­lis is expen­sive and rea­son­ably thought­ful in its design.

But the signs are mono­chro­matic. As a result, the tired trav­eler wan­ders in cir­cles, look­ing for her des­ti­na­tion. Imag­ine how much eas­ier it would be to find out where you were going if every sign with the word TAXI on it had it in yel­low instead of white. Once you knew the color of where you were going, you’d just nat­u­rally scan for it.

Google and our text-based low-res online world seems to argue against color as a sig­nal, but it’s extra­or­di­nar­ily pow­er­ful. You don’t need to make a big deal of of it, sub­tle is enough. Make the but­ton you want pressed green on every page. Soon, your users will nat­u­rally grav­i­tate to green buttons…

This works in Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tions and even con­tracts. A lit­tle goes a long way.