[dvtrn]

The clashing colors help out a lot more than you may think. I can easily filter out, in a city like Chicago exactly what I need filtered out. Walking to the L on Diversey? I only care about the red line, despite being in range of a brown, pink and purple line. I scroll til I see red, bam. 10 minutes. I got time to slide into 7/11 for a soda pop.

Or oh hey light blue. There's a Divvy station nearby. I think I'll bike today.

I love the color presentation of Transit App, personally for this very reason.

[stephencoyner]

I agree color can have powerful meaning and help relate the app to the real world. My point was more the use of color in the app seems dated. There's many ways they could make the app feel more modern while retaining color as a way finding method.

E.g. the green floating search box. What does making this green help with? Again, these are opinions, but it looks a little jenky to me.

[dvtrn]

Dated in what way? Merely curious.

In the case I mentioned, it makes sense because the CTA train lines are quite literally designated by colors (The blue line runs from O'Hare International into downtown, red line from Evanston to south of the city etc), therefore opening the app and seeing a rainbow of colors represents the colored transit modes. So in that context it makes sense, that may have been less than clear in my first comment here.

Regarding the search bar though I think I agree

[stephencoyner]

To me it feels like material design 1.0 - when every Android app had a bunch of bright colors in rectangle shapes.

This is more a styling thing (similar to fashion) but apps have shifted away from this heavy color to more grey, white or dark theme with color used less as more of an accent or to highlight certain features / parts of the UI.

I think Transit app could benefit from going with a more plain color for backgrounds and use their bright colors more sparingly. IMO, less can be more. The whole row of a bus line doesn't need to be red or blue to get the point across for me.

[dvtrn]

The whole row of a bus line doesn't need to be red or blue to get the point across for me.

For numbered buses I think this makes sense and is already the case, in my example, the Chicago Transit rail line, the different rails aren't numbered, they are literally designated by color-as in going to the blue line all of the signage is blue indicating which line station you're at (NYC for example has numbered transit lines for their trains). Said a better way: in some cities certain transit modes don't have names or numbers, but are literally designated by color. We don't have a 6 train, we have a Blue line. The app is consistent with this-and for me that makes perfect sense.

That's why I think-in this instance, and in many others where various public transit modes are designated by color (I think the MTA in Atlanta does?)-it makes perfect sense. It isn't that the Transit App is arbitrarily assigning colors, the colors are assigned to represent how the Chicago Transit Authority _themselves_ have designated each disparate rail line by color.

In other cases, everything else has the same color. Bus line 80, 72, 76 are all just a standard blue color.

Overall though, I completely get your point.

[egypturnash]

Don’t judge it while sitting on your butt with enough time to type out multiple paragraphs about how it could be more restrained. Judge it when you are leaving the office a little late and want to know if you can catch your bus if you hustle right now.

Big blocks of color are great. Big blocks of color are easy to read in a half a second while you’re walking through the crowds on the sidewalk.

[stephencoyner]

Giant blocks of color wont help me differentiate the 31 and the 31bx that are both offered by MUNI in San Francisco. But the giant 32pt type helps me do that.

Even if I had only 1 second in your hypothetical scenario, color doesn't help me differentiate the 2 bus lines from the same agency that don't rely on color at all.

Color is one tool in a suite of tools that designers can choose from to draw attention. My point was over reliance on color looks ugly. Typing this one standing up for you