Issue 2.3, Color
Interview with HP Color Scientist, Nathan Maroney
by Lauren Cross
Nathan Moroney is a principal scientist at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California. He holds a Masters Degree in Color Science from the Munsell Color Science Laboratory of Rochester Institute of Technology and a Bachelors degree in color science from the Philadelphia University. His research interests span various color imaging technologies and machine learning techniques. He is a member of the IS&T and the ISCC. Nathan was the technical chair for CIE Technical Committee 8-01, which developed the CIECAM02 color appearance model. He was the past general co-chair for the IS&T/SID Color Imaging Conference and is a contributor to mostlycolor.ch. He is also the creator of the Interactive Color Zeitgeist and the Online Color Thesaurus, both discussed below. Glimpse Journal: How did you become interested in color? Nathan Moroney: I took an introductory color science course at Philadelphia University, and after the first class, I was hooked. The interdisciplinary nature of color is really quite appealing; color spans vision, physics, chemistry, design and art. Color shows up in the brewing of beer, the study of astronomy, the development of language and the processing of the visual cortex. It’s an intriguing topic with a wide number of applications and manifestations. GJ: You’re currently conducting a study on color naming. Why do you think this type of study is so important? NM: A majority of advanced color research tends to be focused on color-by-numbers or use of color spaces and numeric encodings to communicate and edit color. Even as a full-time color scientist, numbers aren’t nearly as intuitive as names. I think a better understanding of color naming will help create new tools, user interfaces and methods for creating and manipulating digital color. At the same time, color naming is also a complex cognitive process. With a better understanding of color naming comes the possibility of also investigating the general topic of cognitive categorization. GJ: How did the concept of the “Online Color Thesaurus” come about? NM: In 2001, I started an online color naming experiment. Initially, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with the data, but quickly it became clear that it would be useful to organize and format the raw color names. First, I created an alphabetical list of the names that were provided by more than three unique IP, or Internet protocol addresses. Then, I did some computations to find which colors were neighboring colors that gave me the synonyms. From the initial list of names and synonyms, the idea of a thesaurus came to mind. After figuring out a way to compute color antonyms, I formatted the list as an interactive Web tool. Then working with an HP Labs colleague, Giordano Beretta, we launched the tool on the Web. GJ: How does the concept of a “color-pedia” change the way we are able to see and think of color? NM: Color naming as a natural language phenomena is interesting. It is not as arbitrary as exotic designer paint chip names nor is it as simplistic as basic crayon colors. A “color-pedia,” or color naming data, collected from thousands of people is about better understanding the naming process. Harvesting a small number of color names from a large number of people hopefully provides a more representative view of the natural language of color. Previous research has often been based on expert pre-defined vocabularies or extensive study of a small number of participants in a lab. GJ: What is the Interactive Color Zeitgeist Study about? NM: The Interactive Color Zeitgeist is a tool to explore the most frequently queried color names for the Online Color Thesaurus. It’s the most searched for color names based on the users of the Color Thesaurus. GJ: You’ve been able to come up with several different strategies to develop your color naming experiment. Where do you get your inspiration? NM: I have been fortunate to work with a diverse group of people in a research environment that has allowed me to pursue new topics. The scale of the Web is amazing, and online tools are evolving quickly. At the same time, color is everywhere and using the Web to explore color naming has been a good fit. As for specific experiments and tools, there has been a systematic evolution from the basic idea of an online color-naming experiment. The exciting thing is there are still more directions to investigate, and the use of the Web really changes how a single researcher can engage thousands of volunteers to explore a research thread. GJ: Your color naming experiment is “multi-lingual.” How does color naming change amongst different languages? NM: To date, the largest color naming database is in English. The basic color naming experiment though is, in fact, multi-lingual and has been translated to over 20 languages. A majority of the analysis and work has been with English, although I have had a chance to do some more detailed analysis in Spanish and Portuguese. The comparisons are quite interesting. There are similarities, such as among the most commonly used color names, but there are also differences. At this point the results are still preliminary. GJ: Different terms represent various colors in the Online Color Zeitgeist. Some of these terms seem somewhat culturally specific, such as “cinnamon brown.” Some are terms that we recognize as representations of skin tone. Does this study bring together a combination of different cultures’ linguistic interpretations of color? NM: The cultural context of color is quite important. The current Web-based experiment collects data in a way that is essentially out of context. Participants are asked to name colored patches on a display. There is no other description in the instructions. Certainly though, the cultural or regional differences in color naming could be explored using this basic technique. I think there was a huge amount of variation in what the volunteers brought to the color naming experiment. This could be explored using an experiment that collects more information about the participants, or provides a better context for the naming, such as color naming of specific objects or color name associations. GJ: What new innovations should we expect from color science and technology in the future? NM: Stay tuned, but I expect that materials with novel nano-scale properties will exhibit some interesting color characteristics. GJ: What’s your favorite color? NM: Teal.
Links Other articles about color from Glimpse vol 2.3, "the Color issue" Nathan Maroney's Research Page at HP Labs The Mostly Color Channel blog Multi-Lingual Color-Naming Experiment Color Difference Description Experiment |
