It’s been a little over a week since I turned on greyscale mode on my phone, and so far it’s been an interesting experience.
The first thing that struck me was my reliance on colour to find my apps. I have a pretty well-organised home screen, with clear groupings of apps but without colour it felt like my brain had to work that much harder to locate all but my most popular icons. As I got a few screens in, where my organisation broke down more with each page, it became harder and harder to find the apps I was looking for.
Unlike Tom Killeen, who tried a similar experiment for different reasons a couple of years back, I didn’t have any problems noticing app icon badges alerting me to updates, messages etc. I suspect, however, this is because my home screen is all folders of apps, and the icon stands out a bit more in a screen of identical icons. I could definitely see me missing them amongst a sea of varying greys.
The next thing that was very apparent was a lack of detail. This was pretty much expected in photos, but I was surprised that this also applied to my use of Google Maps and other apps. Trying to figure out the map without colour wasn’t hard, but it was harder. I felt more disoriented using it than I ever have previously, and that surprised me a lot. It was easy to miss the usually-blue bus stops, and I felt that for just a few moments I couldn’t recognise places I’ve known for years. When asking Google Maps for directions, the route dots weren’t easy to pick out from the background map, and even harder to differentiate from alternative routes.
My use of photos has definitely seen a drop, not just viewing them but also taking them. I’m not a prolific photographer or selfie artist, but I’ve undertaken two 365 day photo challenges this year – one to take selfies, the other to quick-pic my meal (I never said I was original!). I’m finding my motivation challenged on that since I removed colour. My mindset is almost “why take a photo when I can’t see it as it should be”, although I have two caveats which are keeping me afloat – that this is a limited time experiment and I’ll see colour photos again at the end; and that if I need something in colour I can use my laptop to view it. These are both cheats, I’m aware, but I’m going to clutch them hard with both hands!
I have been quite impressed with the design of the apps I’ve been using – I have yet to experience a total showstopper, although one or two have come close, particularly where the greyscale shades representing different colours are very similar, making picking out differences between crucial segments of the screen potentially very difficult.
I have noticed that I’m spotting little details I hadn’t noticed before though. For example, for those of you who play Mario Kart, did you know that the Red Shell and Green Shell icons point in opposite directions? Red faces right while Green faces left. It took me a while to figure that out, but it means that the game has been designed to not disadvantage those who are colour blind! Well done Nintendo.
I have a new problem for the upcoming week. In a relatively spur-of-the-moment decision, my wife and I have upgraded our phones. I’ve pulled all my settings across to the new device, so greyscale is still firmly in place. But now I have a shiny new phone (and much improved camera!) that I want to explore and enjoy, but I have to do it in monochrome! I will report back next week on how that has affected me!