Presenter - Ellen Divers

Ellen Divers, president Ellen Divers Design
Afternoon Breakout Session - Tuesday, June 9

Abstract

Historically, research into how color affects people’s emotions has consisted of the comparisons between individual hues, yet these studies have yielded mixed results, suggesting that people are not similarly wired when it comes to hue, and/or that there are other unidentified forces at work. Recently, some researchers have observed that value (lightness/darkness) and chroma (colorfulness) may exert an equal or even stronger influence than hue on people’s affective response to color. This possibility deserves further study because of its impact on design specialties, such as interior design, which influence people’s experience of spaces where they live, work and play. Ellen will present the results of a study that explored impressions of six distinct “colorsets”, each containing all the hues, but varied in value and chroma. There was broad agreement among subjects in their impressions of the colorsets, especially in those exhibiting extreme value and chroma. Ellen will present key findings and introduce the Value-Chroma Paradigm, a new model for thinking about color.

Bio

Born in the United States and raised in Argentina, Ellen Diver’s perspective on color (and life in general) was shaped by navigating between cultures -- an experience that taught her to look beneath the surface of things for common threads and universal connections. Her upbringing, combined with an affinity for design and conceptual thinking, paved the way to her current exploration of how people respond to color. An interest in the workings of the mind led to a double major in Psychology and Women’s Studies at University of Richmond (Virginia) and Ellen then went on to obtain an M.Ed. in Adult Education from Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, Virginia).  Ellen subsequently put her instructional design skills, as well as her innate visual/design thinking skills to work first in a corporate setting and then as a solo practitioner.

Her interest in design eventually led her to the seminars offered by Frank Mahnke of the International Association of Color Consultants and Designers (IACC).  She then began delving into research literature on a quest to better understand how color affects people -- in particular, people like her mother who were living with dementia. Reviewing studies about best practices in architectural design for this population prompted Ellen to pursue a B.S. degree in Interior Design with a minor in Studio Art from Meredith College (Raleigh, NC), where she graduated in 2018.  While at Meredith she began the study being presented at this conference entitled Beyond Hue: The Affective Response to Color and the Value-Chroma Paradigm. Ellen plans to continue research in this vein and is working independently in hopes of developing a curriculum to address the apparent gap in color education for interior designers and architectural color consultants.  www.ellendiversdesign.com