Vent: My old website's dark blue on black looked cool to me, but my cousin with color blindness said it was just a gray blob.

I learned that what looks slick to me might be totally unreadable for someone else, so who else has had a design fail a basic check like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

paul_sanchez20d ago

Forget color blindness, I once made a button the exact same gray as the background. People just clicked on a blank spot for a week. My own mom couldn't find the checkout. You get so focused on the vibe you forget people need to actually use the thing.

ryan_smith3720d ago

Paul_sanchez that's a classic. I once designed a login form where the submit button was just a tiny arrow icon with no label. Got a support ticket from my own boss asking how to sign in. We get so deep into making things look clean that basic functions just vanish. Had a user try to drag the logo because they thought it was a slider.

jessicab707d ago

I read a study that said around 8% of men have some form of color blindness, which is a huge chunk of users to ignore. It's easy to get lost in aesthetics and forget function, like paul_sanchez said about his invisible button. I saw a talk where a designer showed how their "minimal" form looked like just a blank box to screen reader users. We build things for ourselves first and just hope others figure it out, which is a pretty bad way to make stuff for the public.