This research was a part of my final project for Computational Color (CS 294-164) taught by Professor Ren Ng in Fall 2020. My teammates and I pursued the research questions:

1. How might we understand and quantify qualitative, contextual, perceptual differences across di-, tri-, and tetrachromatic color experiences? 

2. How might this inform the problem space of producing tetrachromatic color experiences for trichromats?

Tetrachromacy is characterized by the rare presence of a fourth cone cell class in the retina, which in some conditions presents a hyperspectral fourth dimension of color vision. We explored methods of simulating tetrachromacy for trichromats and found that the lack of experiential knowledge of tetrachromacy is a key obstacle in this problem space. Through carefully standardized qualitative interviews with individuals of diverse dimensional color experiences paired with color data analysis of flat color samples, we contributed towards a better understanding of perceptual color experiences and how they compare, quantitatively and qualitatively, across dichromatic, trichromatic, and tetrachromatic individuals. This work contributes to the knowledge required to develop more foundationally sound and contextually informed tetrachromatic experiments and simulations.