Cwa-documentation: UI-Design, current use of signal color (alone)

[tik-boomer]

Issue:
Please take into account that a substantial number of citizens have a restricted color vision ("color blindness"). It is estimated that this affects up to approx. 9% of the male poulation in Germany, and a lower percentage of the overall population. This especially affects "red" and "green" vision for many of these citizens. Chosing "special color contrasts" from general accessibility settings does not help these app users, when color alone is used for the purpose of "intuitive" status information.

Suggested Enhancement

Suggestion / Request:
add a status symbol to each status information / status screen, so that the status is intuitively clear for users with restricted color vision. The status symbols should be different in outline. "Traffic lights" are usually not good symbols for this purpose. More suitable symbols could be e.g. "Smiley / Neutral / Frownie" or "Thumb up / Question Mark / Lightning" or similar, or ask an expert for inclusive UI design... This would even enhance usaibility for users who have full color vision.

Test:
Produce copies of the user interface screens where the actual text is replaced by dummy text and print it using greyscale printing only. The status represented should then be obvious from the carefully chosen status symbol only.

Please note that this applies to the Android UI as well as to the iOS UI. Please coordinate for both UIs. If necessary copy the issue to the iOS UI issues, too.

Current Implementation

Referring to:
This is referring to the current user interface samples with green status text background and the following sentence from this document ui_screens.md : "The design of the central overview, the usage of signal color to highlight the current risk level, as well as the explanatory illustrations ensure an intuitive consumption of the app."

Expected Benefits

Better, more intuitive usability for more citizens, thus higher overall UI quality and higher overall user acceptance.

[SebastianWolf-SAP]

Possible duplicate of https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/170.

[tik-boomer]

Actually, yes this is a duplicate of the comment. After writing the comment, I realized that it would need to be an enhancement request instead. Sorry for the duplication, may be the comment should be changed to refer to this enhancement request?

[SebastianWolf-SAP]

Well, I was referring to the respective issue https://github.com/corona-warn-app/cwa-documentation/issues/170 which addresses more or less the same topic as you presented here and in this comment to the commit.

We really appreciate your feedback here and the very detailed proposal, but our UX/UI team already came back with their statement that the signal color is definitely not the only differentiator to notify the user. Thus, they plan to keep the red/green color coding as _additional_ indicator for those one who are able to see the colors.

Consequently, there is no need to change the comment to the commit. We will close this issue as duplicate to the aforementioned issue and also move it to the cwa-documentation repository as it affects both clients.

In case you would like to reopen it, please let us know with the concrete details why and we will follow-up.

Thank you for your understanding!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,
SW
Corona Warn-App Open Source Team

[tik-boomer]

Thanks for the explanation, I had not seen #170.

I would like to reopen and focus my request on:

_"update Android and iOS app screens to include an iconic graphical representation of the app user's status, in addition to color indication and text - and use color invariant and color independent status icons for this purpose"_

... and I suggest keeping it open until this has been evaluated for the completed UI design, handling the status similar to #168 and the explanation by @jarjarbentley there.

The rationale essentially stays the same. The discussion in #170 and #168 do not cover my enhancement request fully.

Thank you and best regards. :-)

[SebastianWolf-SAP]

Hi @tik-boomer,

jut got a reply by our UX/UI experts. I'm sorry to tell you that we won't reopen this issue. Several reasons for that:

1. The prominent title, stating the risk-level, is the main information element
2. The content and icons change between the different risk-levels to further differentiate and explain the levels
3. The solid colored background emphasizes the importance of the risk-level card vs. all other elements on the home-screen
4. The app is of course supporting the OS-built-in color filters for users with color vision deficiencies, such as protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia

Thank you for your understanding.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards,
SW
Corona Warn-App Open Source Team