Change color gradient to differentiate between observations that are 1 vs 2 days old

[scottveirs]

The current color palette used to indicate the age of observations makes it difficult to differentiate between 1 vs 2 days. As a user of the acartia.io landing page, I would like to be able to clearly see the distribution of the most recent sightings in the data cooperative (ie. that are <1 day old).

Example screenshot showing current color palette gradient:

Proposed solutions

1. Switch from a gradient to color boundaries that change every time an observation ages by another day.
2. Change the gradient so that there is more change between observations that are about 1 vs about 2 days old.

[scottveirs]

As of January 2023, Ali was going to study accessibility palettes before proposing/implementing a modification to the color scheme Peter (and Nick?) selected.

[scottveirs]

The last few days of mostly Bigg’s and gray whale sightings are highlighting how confusing the red “today” vs “yesterday” can be in Puget Sound.

[scottveirs]

@aalaydrus In my mind this issue is slightly higher-priority than #4 -- but only ramp up on it if you want a front-end "challenge!"

[scottveirs]

If you want other opinions about accessibility palettes, @aalaydrus, you could seek guidance from the Acartia UX team that @UXBrendan has been getting more organized recently.

[scottveirs]

@aalaydrus Ask Maria to help test the accessibility of the color palette!

[scottveirs]

Hey @aalaydrus -- Twitter provided this recent paper re color palettes you may find valuable: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19160-7

[scottveirs]

And from Paul (here:

-- important for stuff like spectrograms. the solution, most of the time: Viridis

-- cividis is probably the best for accessibility but does reduce the perceptual sensitivity compared to viridis

if possible (i.e. not an image) it's even better to allow users to select between the different color scales

[scottveirs]

Hey @aalaydrus -- How about taking every 5th or 6th color from this array, starting with the top yellow for <1 day old?

...clipped from Paul's link above -- https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html