Color Builder: A Direct Manipulation Interface for Versatile Color Theme Authoring

Color themes or palettes are popular for sharing color combinations across many visual domains. We present a novel interface for creating color themes through direct manipulation of color swatches. Users can create and rearrange swatches, and combine them into smooth and step-based gradients and three-color blends -- all using a seamless touch or mouse input. Analysis of existing solutions reveals a fragmented color design workflow, where separate software is used for swatches, smooth and discrete gradients and for in-context color visualization. Our design unifies these tasks, while encouraging playful creative exploration. Adjusting a color using standard color pickers can break this interaction flow with mechanical slider manipulation. To keep interaction seamless, we additionally design an in situ color tweaking interface for freeform exploration of an entire color neighborhood. We evaluate our interface with a group of professional designers and students majoring in this field.