Heatmap colours and questions report colours
Why the colours are different
Each report uses a colour scale tuned to the job it does:
- Questions report: reading one question in detail.
- Heatmap: scanning a whole survey to find where groups differ.
Because the two reports answer different questions, the same score can appear in a different shade in each. Both readings are correct.
How the heatmap colours work
By default, the heatmap uses a green to red gradient:
- Green shows more positive responses. Deeper green means more positive.
- Red shows less positive responses. Deeper red means less positive.
The gradient changes in lightness as well as hue, so patterns stay readable for people with colour vision differences.
This scale is designed to make outliers stand out, so you can see at a glance where a group is reporting higher or lower than the rest.
How the questions report is different
The questions report uses fixed colour thresholds suited to close reading of a single question. It is not optimised for comparing many cells side by side, which is why the heatmap uses its own scale.
Seeing the difference
The same heatmap, viewed under each scheme, makes the trade-off easy to see.
This is how the heatmap would look if the colour thresholds from the questions report were used:
And here is how the same report looks with the default green to red gradient:
The green to red gradient stretches the available colour range across your actual results, so outliers and patterns between groups stand out. The questions report thresholds apply the same fixed bands to every cell, which can make a report with broadly positive results look uniform.
Choosing the colour scheme that works best for your data
The default green to red gradient works well for most organisations because it makes differences between teams and questions easy to spot.
For organisations whose results are strongly positive across the board, the heatmap can look almost entirely green, which makes it harder to see the differences that still matter between groups. In those cases, using the same colour thresholds as the questions report gives you a clearer read.
To support both cases, we have a setting that lets your admins switch between the two colour schemes directly inside the heatmap report. You can pick whichever view makes your data easiest to interpret.
What happens when the toggle is on
Once the toggle is enabled for your account:
- A control appears inside the heatmap report to switch between the two colour schemes.
- Each admin's choice is remembered in their own browser, so different users can view the heatmap in the scheme that suits them.
- Exports from the heatmap report (for example, Excel downloads) use the colour scheme you have selected at the time of export, so what you see on screen matches what you share.
How to turn on the colour scheme toggle
The toggle is off by default. To enable it for your account, contact your Customer Success contact at AskYourTeam and ask for the Heatmap score colour toggle to be turned on. Once it is on, your admins can switch between colour schemes from inside the heatmap report whenever they need to.