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Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

support.discord.com

21–30 of 98 posts

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this case the changes are making an existing situation worse, so by changing it Discord's design team is inflicting harm. The product itself is not harmful, just inaccessible, but describing the changes as harmful seems right. I have to use Discord every day for work, so if this redesign was interfering with that I'd be pissed. (I pay for a third-party Discord client for this and other reasons)

harm /härm/ noun : physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted. Nobody is inflicting any harm by choosing a bad color palette.

The word "harm" means many things. Just google "consumer harm", for example, and the top result is a government agency using the word harm to describe non-physical injury:

https://www.fdic.gov/resources/supervision-and-examinations/...

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#23
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this case the changes are making an existing situation worse, so by changing it Discord's design team is inflicting harm. The product itself is not harmful, just inaccessible, but describing the changes as harmful seems right. I have to use Discord every day for work, so if this redesign was interfering with that I'd be pissed. (I pay for a third-party Discord client for this and other reasons)

harm /härm/ noun : physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted. Nobody is inflicting any harm by choosing a bad color palette.

You’re conveniently skipping over the secondary definitions, which includes “actual or potential ill effect or danger”.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#24

I miss the times™ where theming was a thing in my favorite programs and environments. WinAmp, MySpace, even my Nokia 6300 had themes. I never understood why this trend didn't stay and become more popular.

I imagine it's because it makes the app look amateurish.

There were really nice looking themes for the 6300 e.g. here: https://www.deviantart.com/search?q=6300%20theme

And WinAmp was kind of famous for its themes. If well done, they didn't look amateurish at all. Even better than the original.

But it's true that currently most UIs that don't look like all the others quickly seem half-baked.

Anyway, having even a little theme support in popular programs would fix issues like the posted one easily.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#25
post #10

The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. I am also not sure how "Elements lack unity" is related to the UI causing harm. I don't use discord, so I have no idea how good the UI is. If the UI is bad and hard for the visually impaired to use, there is definitely a…

It should rub you the wrong way because the language is wrong! The author has used the wrong word to describe the problem. If you replace the word harm and harmful with difficult it makes sense.

harmful:

of a kind likely to be damaging

difficult:

hard to deal with, manage, or overcome

I've done it for everyone:

>Saturated dark colors against dark backgrounds are hard to read and difficult to parse

>White mentions lack visual clarity and are incredibly difficult for individuals with visual impairment

>Color redesign lacks contrast and are difficult for individuals who are colorblind and/or visually impaired

>Elements lack unity

>Saturated, mid-value colors covering large fields are difficult for end-users

>Text contrast with new colors fail the WCAG test

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#26

I miss the times™ where theming was a thing in my favorite programs and environments. WinAmp, MySpace, even my Nokia 6300 had themes. I never understood why this trend didn't stay and become more popular.

I miss the times before applications had their own theming and just used bog-standard OS provided widgets that could be themed globally by the user. That this has fallen out of favor is, in my opinion, a good indication of how unprofessional and user-hostile our industry has become.

We didn't use to need bespoke "dark modes", you just changed the colors globally. We did this in the 90s, when 64MB of ram was huge. We have become pathetic.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#27
post #10

The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. I am also not sure how "Elements lack unity" is related to the UI causing harm. I don't use discord, so I have no idea how good the UI is. If the UI is bad and hard for the visually impaired to use, there is definitely a…

A person who uses Discord posting on the Discord forum about how the changes (in their opinion) make the product worse to use is not exactly a good comparison to a "bad tumblr post", unless what makes it a bad tumblr post is that it's a downer or you feel it doesn't meet your quality bar for Good Forum Content. By my reckoning, the post clearly enumerates their complaints with the new design, it provides some referen…

I think it’s the “harmful” rhetoric that signals “I have an agenda”. We really need to get passed this charged way of conveying perfectly valid feedback. Because come on. It’s a chat app.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#29
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in this case the changes are making an existing situation worse, so by changing it Discord's design team is inflicting harm. The product itself is not harmful, just inaccessible, but describing the changes as harmful seems right. I have to use Discord every day for work, so if this redesign was interfering with that I'd be pissed. (I pay for a third-party Discord client for this and other reasons)

harm /härm/ noun : physical injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted. Nobody is inflicting any harm by choosing a bad color palette.

You're being a bit disingenuous here. Other definitions of harm include: "have an adverse effect on" and "actual or potential ill effects".

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#30

I miss the times™ where theming was a thing in my favorite programs and environments. WinAmp, MySpace, even my Nokia 6300 had themes. I never understood why this trend didn't stay and become more popular.

I miss the times before applications had their own theming and just used bog-standard OS provided widgets that could be themed globally by the user. That this has fallen out of favor is, in my opinion, a good indication of how unprofessional and user-hostile our industry has become. We didn't use to need bespoke "dark modes", you just changed the colors globally. We did this in the 90s, when 64MB of ram was huge . We…

Switching Windows to dark mode
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