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Darren Van Laar

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Publications by Darren Van Laar (bibliography)

1991

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Laar, Darren Van and Flavell, Richard (1991): Two Methods for Producing Discriminable Colour Sets for Computer Displays. In ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 23 (4) p. 75.

1989

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Laar, Darren Van (1989): Evaluating a Colour Coding Programming Support Tool. In: Sutcliffe, Alistair G. and Macauley, Linda (eds.) Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers V August 5-8, 1989, University of Nottingham, UK. pp. 217-230.

“Program comprehension and ease of debugging may be improved by using colour coding and indentation in a programming language (Gilmore&Green [1988]). This paper evaluates the usefulness of a program developed to colour code Pascal control structures to see whether it held advantages over ordinary monochrome indented displays. Sixteen (8M, 8F) experienced Pascal programmers took part in the experimental assessment of the package. Subjects were asked comprehension quiz questions about unfamiliar Pascal programs which were presented in the four experimental conditions: colour coded structures with normal (4 space) indentation, colour coding with no indentation, monochrome presentation (yellow on black) with indentation and monochrome without indentation. It was found that subjects answered comprehension questions significantly faster in the colour coded conditions than in the monochrome conditions. Indented conditions were significantly faster than the unindented conditions. Subjects rated each of the conditions on 'ease of use' for the task. A non-parametric test found that colour coded displays were rated as significantly more usable than monochrome displays while indented displays were seen as easier to use than unindented displays.”

1988

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Laar, Darren Van and Flavell, Richard (1988): Towards the Construction of a Maximally-Contrasting Set of Colours. In: Jones, Dylan M. and Winder, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers IV August 5-9, 1988, University of Manchester, UK. pp. 373-389.

“Two experiments are reported. The first investigates the relationship between hue, lightness and saturation in determining colour contrast in displays, the second examines the effect of surrounding and adjacent colours on the perception of stimuli in colour displays. All subjects taking part in the experiments had normal colour vision. Hue difference between stimuli was found to exert the biggest single effect on colour contrast, with similar hues being discriminated significantly more slowly than different hues. Lightness difference also produced a significant effect in the same direction. Saturation effects were surprising in that more similar saturations were associated with significantly faster reaction times. In the second experiment strong brightness and hue context (induction) effects were observed but effects due to target size and saturation did not reach significance. The relevance of these findings to designers of colour displays is discussed.”

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