ColoGene: Empowering Designers with Genetic Narratives of Traditional Chinese Colors

In color design, cultural knowledge remains scattered across academic papers and museums, making it less accessible during the creative process when designers need it most. We present ColoGene, a culturally-informed color design tool that transforms colors from simple visual values into cultural objects, with contextualization and provenance tracking through verifiable sources. This enables culturally-driven color selection to integrate more seamlessly into design workflows. We evaluated ColoGene through formative interviews and a pilot workshop study. Initial results showed more consistent task completion, larger pre-post gains on cultural design measures, and high usability scores compared to traditional tools. Our findings suggest that making cultural context accessible and actionable can improve both design efficiency and cultural justification quality, representing a promising direction for enabling better culture-sensitive design. © 2026 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).