Normalizing Human Skin Colors for User Interaction

I personally wouldn't define a domain; let that be a textbox and everybody fills anything he/she wants. I prefer this way just because can be a polemic and potentially offensive subject, like this.

EDIT: Or, what about doesn't display any names, but colors instead? Use that Von Luschan's scale and use a "Select your color: " label. You don't need to name it and can to define a domain into your database.

You may wish to consider skin tones defined by cosmetic companies as these can be quite exact and even refer to tanning effects.

I'd do something like the Nintendo Wii's Mii Editor and just show several swatches of colors. Even if the monitor isn't calibrated, if someone sees them all on the screen at once they should be able to make the correct choice.

You can then give the color an internal name and do your data mining on that.

olayforyou.com defines these skin tones

alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/151ab0ddd7.jpg

• very fair
• fair
• olive
• dark
• very dark

Any person using cosmetics regularly would understand these terms. These rest of us are just guessing :-)