Today marks the 10th day since the new redesigned HP community platform was launched. Who's counting right?

Let me introduce myself, I am the online customer experience lead for communities and social media at HP.com. In layman's terms, that means I really care about your experience when you visit our online communities.

One thing that has been on my mind A LOT lately is our new light text on dark background color-scheme for blogs. Blogs are a unique situation because they tend to be quite text heavy. I like to think of them more like online periodicals. That being said, we have a unique set of challenges when it comes to user experience.

For example, do our users have to squint to see the words... do the letters start dancing around on the page after about 10 minutes of staring at the screen? These questions sound simple enough, but they actually are not that easy to answer. Let's reminisce for a moment.

Looking back

According to some sources, the world's first printed newspaper was published by the Chinese in 700 A.D. using hand carved wooden blocks. About 700 hundred years later, the world's first modern printing press (the moveable-type) was invented by a German man in 1450. It wasn't until 1701 that America's first newspaper was published in Boston. It was referred to as a "half-sheet" and was printed on both sides of the page, similar to a news-letter.

As you would expect, throughout history, man has been publishing newspapers, articles, books, papers, etc. on white (or some form of white) surfaces with dark ink. All-in-all, that practice has not changed for over 1,300 years. Just scanning the best-seller book shelves at the local bookstore proves this quite nicely. I would say that's a pretty long time to practice something so consistently. There must be a very good reason.

Let's think about that question: Why have we been printing publications on light surfaces with dark ink for so long? One possible answer could be because it's the most practical and cost effective method (my second-grader could have answered that question). Or could it be that we have just gotten used to doing it for so long, and hey..why fix it if it aint broke? What about technical limitations in the printing process? Could it be that technical limitations over a thousand years ago set the trends that we continue following even today?

Take a step back and think about it for a moment: What if we removed all technical limitations, all historical practices, and all expectations. As of now, the sky's the limit. Don't worry about whether printing on black paper will rub off on your fingers. Forget the limitations the physical world places on us. Now... ask the question: What text color scheme presents the best user experience for readers? Before we can answer that question, we need to explore some of the facts.

My future blog posts in this series will start peeling away the layers to get closer to an answer to this critical question....stay tuned.

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