Evaluating the cognitive process of color affordance and attractiveness based on the ERP

Abstract

In industrial design, color is one of the most expressive and appealing attributes of an artifact. Specifically, color can induce feelings (color attractiveness) and or the perception of some affordances (“color affordance”) in users. Researchers define “color affordance” as the inducing of a certain behavior, perception or understandings in direct or indirect ways due to the color of an artifact. In order to know the amount of internal cognitive resources and information process speed that users experience, this study explores the effect of saturation/brightness variation on color attractiveness and “color affordance” by means of event-related potentials. The results of this study show that color attractiveness is influenced by its brightness, while, color affordance is involved in the cognitive process earlier than color attractiveness.