New colors coming to Asana!

I like the new colours! Great stuff!

Would love the option to revert or to select brand-specific palettes, as another poster mentioned. I agree that it’s difficult to differentiate between options when the options are so limited.

I also recently posted about another color-related change pertaining to backgrounds in field selections. UX should be focused on improving readability, not impeding it.

17 Likes

Streamlining the new colour palette sounds great but the new colours doesn’t work well when using asana in dark mode, the new colours don’t contrast well and makes identifying between projects & tags at a glance really hard. Would be great to have two versions of the new palette, a pastel like version (current new version) and a more bright and vibrant version for those who love bright contrasts

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I agree with what a lot of the commenters have to say on this matter. With this change I feel so lost in how all of my projects and tasks are color coded. Nothing makes sense and I am having a hard time finding color alternatives in this palette that have the same impact as the old palette. I hope you can take this feedback under consideration and seriously consider reverting back to the old colors.

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I do not like this at all. I rely on my color tags for a LOT of things and now I feel like I’m looking at my Asana through a sepia filter that makes me have to squint to differentiate colors.

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I’m not the biggest fan yet, but will likely get used to the new colors. So far my main issue is that the timeline week vs. weekend colors don’t contrast enough and it makes it a little harder to identify dates with the new color schemes.

Hope this gets fixed.

2 Likes

I do not like the color changes, can I go back to the old colors?

In the light theme, everything looks grayscale, dull, dreary, faded. The background of the page is not white anymore but is a shaded kind of gray.

All of the colors are closer together, harder to differentiate. They don’t pop off the screen, they seem watered-down.

22 Likes

Yuck. Not digging these colors one bit. So dull, dreary, boring, and frustrating to have you change the colors on me when you’re used to seeing one thing and now it’s another. Frustrating.

16 Likes

Echoing what others have said, I am not finding the new color palette conducive to productivity. I actually spent 20 minutes today troubleshooting as I assumed it was an issue on my end. Being more communicative within the app would be helpful, as I didn’t see any release notes/feature showcase covering this change.

My first impressions of using the new theme is that the changes feel arbitrary and not semantically motivated. Some may prefer it. That’s fine, if the desire is to accommodate more user preferences then create a theming system and just make this another stylesheet that users can select.

While I respect the motivation to simplify the color palette, the way it is applied in the interface results in more visual complexity for me. The low contrast between the semantic colors (used to indicate Projects and Status) and various mud-grays means there is less visual hierarchy. Scanning my Inbox or my Tasks, everything seems similarly muted and my eyes wander around the screen.

I agree with the motivation to reduce the distraction coming from color. In general the interface has relied far too much on color and I tend to prefer monochromatic-skewing UIs. That said, while color is less distracting in this update, tone has taken its place. The UI feels heavy with seemingly arbitrary tonal contrasts. I’m curious what research you are referencing that would suggest the interface is more balanced, approachable, and calm as compared to a more neutral/OS-native application. It still feels like there is too much of the brand on this surface.

For me, this update is worse for contrast ratio. In particular the contrast between quoted text color and the background color when an item is hovered. I never had an issue before, but found myself squinting almost immediately after this update. In general it seems that the contrast was increased for elements where it is not important (e.g. between adjacent surfaces) and decreased for critical interface elements (e.g. between text and the background).

Accessibility is mentioned as one of the design goals, yet you are also insisting on “a consistent user experience” which, to me, seems incompatible with true accessibility. You’re also missing out on potential user feedback. If large numbers of users would revert the colors given the choice, even if there was some hurdle involved, wouldn’t you want to know?

29 Likes

Ya I can’t imagine its too difficult in the display settings empower your users to choose “calm” or “vibrant” theme (old colours vs. these new muted tones)… In the exact same way you allow us to choose light vs. dark modes (love the dark mode btw).

I honestly thought my macbook’s display colour had been changed this morning. I personally am not loving the muted tones… theme choice would be nice :muscle::raised_hands:

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Agree with everything Jon has stated here. I am having an issue with the contrast as well. Everything just blends in. Asana, please make this an option just like the Light/Dark theme and not a standard for all.

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Sadly another vote her for difficulty in differentiating colours, in some cases readability is significantly impacted.

We used a ‘traffic light’ style system for identifying progress and staging, but now the colours are so similar it is hard to differentiate stages when side by side. The biggest issue we are finding here is our previously light blue tasks now appear green, we’ve already had people presuming that these tasks were ready for next stages (green) when they remain on hold (light blue).

Things that previously took a quick glance to identify (e.g. todays tasks v upcoming) are quite difficult to identify without straining.

While I appreciate and understand each of the points that you were intending to achieve, readability is surely a priority.

As mentioned by @Chadd_Weston - the solution may be as simple as providing users with a choice between a “calm” or “vibrant” theme.

14 Likes

I agree with all negative comments. Reading this thread, almost all dislike the change and are more than happy with old colors. Revert back or give the option, but don’t change it…you’re users are speaking! Thanks for keeping the old colors in advanced…from my entire team.

10 Likes

I too preferred the previous colours. I liked that they were ‘punchy’ and easy to recognise through peripheral vision, especially when bold colours were chosen to communicate status. For me, they weren’t visually distracting.

A choice of palettes with the ability to customise colours would be ideal.

15 Likes

I just got hit with the new tag color rollout, and it’s awful. It’s so hard to look at, and it hurts my eyes due to the lack of contrast and similar color values. It’s really slowing me down with my projects. I was so used to the original color palette, and greatly prefer it.

What a poor decision to force a new palette on existing users who have already built their projects around the original color palette. Many of my coworkers are also frustrated and hating this new update.

Sure be inclusive of others, but don’t screw over everyone else. It should be something people can opt into or opt out of. Bad call Asana. :-1:

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The new color is so much harder to tell the difference between red & orange. Please reconsider this decision and roll back to previous color tone.

This is making our job so much harder.

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@Anna_Spexarth this is a good improvement, great suggestion.

1 Like

I agree with all the negative comments and I do not like this change.

The core purpose of the colors in the software is to make clear differentiability between contexts, components and actions. The new pallet is absolutely failing in this core purpose therefore any other mentioned “reasons” for this change are not relevant. Not a good product decision.

14 Likes

Not a fan of these changes at all. These colors make Asana hard to see/read at a glance. They’re all so muted (and there’s such a small difference in color between the complete and incomplete colors) that when I’m in my calendar view, I can’t tell what’s been completed and what is incomplete. Please bring back the vibrant colors.

9 Likes

Not a fan of the new colours. I actually woke up today and started debugging a 4K monitor thinking it had some colour defect.

12 Likes