Research question. How can Grounded feel warm, recognisable and individual while keeping changing airport information easy to distinguish and read?
Colour is part of the brand, but it also changes what people notice first and how they separate information. For this app, the audience is autistic adults travelling independently through environments where attention may already be shared between signs, announcements, people, luggage and the next action. I therefore need to decide not only which colours feel right to the identity, but where each colour belongs, what it might imply, and whether essential information still works when colour is hard to distinguish or the display changes.
Colour associations can inform a visual direction, but they do not predict one person’s response. Jonauskaite and Mohr’s 2025 systematic review identified 132 relevant studies published between 1895 and 2022, involving 42,266 people across 64 countries. It found recurring colour–emotion associations, but many associations were many-to-many and influenced by lightness, saturation and hue. The authors also note that most studies test associations in abstract settings; that does not show that a particular screen will make a traveller feel a particular emotion in an airport. Jonauskaite and Mohr, “Do we feel colours?”
This gives me a useful way to think about the current palette. Lilac can contribute a distinctive, imaginative and expressive identity; lime can make an action or small character feel energetic and visible. Those are design associations I want to explore, not claims that lilac is calming or lime is motivating for autistic adults. Colour meaning will also change when it is used as a tiny accent, a route line, a large screen background or text on a button. The audience and task matter as much as the hue.
The audience cannot be reduced to one sensory preference. MacLennan, O’Brien and Tavassoli’s participatory qualitative research describes autistic adults’ sensory experiences as complex across sensory domains, including vision. It supports asking about individual experience rather than prescribing a universal sensory environment. Maia’s own Critical Report similarly reports a small, self-selected questionnaire with themes around sensory environments, changing needs, independence and control. Neither source evaluates these palette options. I need to treat colour as a hypothesis to test with autistic adults, not as an autism-specific formula. MacLennan et al., “In Our Own Words: The Complex Sensory Experiences of Autistic Adults” · GDE751: Week 10: What Autistic Adults Need from Air Travel.
For the gate-change task, the most important colour decision is whether the new destination, previous destination and next action can be found without relying on subtle colour differences. WCAG 2.2’s AA contrast criterion sets a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text against its background. The calculation is based on relative luminance, so a different hue alone does not guarantee readable text. The W3C guidance also notes that thin or unusual lettering can be harder to read in practice even when a calculation passes. W3C: Contrast (Minimum)
WCAG also says that colour must not be the only visual way to communicate information, indicate an action or distinguish an element. In Grounded, “Go to gate A04” and “Previous gate B12” therefore need explicit words and hierarchy; the new gate cannot be indicated only by lime, and a red/green difference cannot be the only way to show a status. Shape, labels, position, icon and text can reinforce a colour cue. This supports a colourful identity while making the information available through more than one cue. W3C: Use of Color
Passing a contrast calculation would be a baseline, not proof that a screen is comfortable, easy to scan or accessible for the intended audience. I still need to test the actual colours in light and dark appearances, at phone scale, with enlarged text and on a real device. Apple’s guidance similarly recommends checking legibility in different appearances and accessibility settings. GDE751: Week 19: iOS and dark mode options
The supplied character and app references show bright pink, lime, aqua, lilac, yellow, orange and blue. I am interested in their use of simple colour fields, clear silhouettes and expressive contrasts. The images are sources for visual exploration; they do not tell me what an airport user will prefer. The airport examples in my earlier brand research have a different job: they prioritise current journey information, navigation and service details. I want Grounded to retain a recognisable personality without letting brand colour compete with the operational fact. GDE751: Week 18: Brand research
The colour references helped me identify a lively family, but I did not want every colour to have equal weight in the interface. The next question became whether a bright colour should fill the screen, frame the journey, mark a character or carry an action.
The boards below collect the main colour trials in one place. They show my visual iterations; they are not participant evaluations.
First app-colour comparison: violet/lemon, teal/papaya and peach/cobalt.