Lights on Christmas

It’s Christmas morning and you’re reading emails? What’s wrong with you? Or…What’s wrong with me for sending it out?

Anyway, it is Christmas. I’m sure you’ve seen all the festive lights around your town, but what about those festive lights you see at busy intersections? Those lights are giving us joy (or frustration) almost all the time. Have you ever wondered about those lights? Why those colors?

Want to know more? How is this meaningful to your business?

When I first started to do my research on traffic lights, I thought it was not going to be so complicated. To my surprise, it is VERY complicated. For the purpose of this blog, let’s stay focused on the colors of red and green.

It’s important to see the traffic lights from as far away as possible. The wavelengths of Red, Yellow and Green are the longest and can be seen by the farthest distance.

Back in the early days of railway lights, green originally meant "caution," while the "all-clear" light was, well, clear or white. Trains, of course, take time to stop, and legend has it that several disastrous collisions happened after an engineer mistook stars in the night horizon for an all-clear. Thus, green became "go,"

In most cultures, red is the color of extremes. It’s the color of; love, violence, anger, and danger. 77% of all the flags in the world contain red. Red captures your attention. Thus, red become “stop”

I love a system that has deep thought put into it. What systems does your business need and how can you put some thought into it?