UI Issues and Accessibility

I've been a long-time fan of Discord's UI and design and there's really nothing I can say that hasn't already been said by everybody else about this UI update, but it's just not very good.

It's hard on the eyes, significantly clutters the screen, makes scrolling through messages a pain with all the flashing and menus, and is really antithetical to Discord's design as being sleek and compact. And really, honest show of hands, who uses reactions enough to warrant there being a quick menu for it?

In addition to this, it's made the whole thing much more difficult to navigate. Plenty of people now have to re-learn their muscle memory for editing and deleting messages for no real reason, the last UI worked just fine. In regards to accessibility, I have plenty of friends who have griped about the update being objectively worse for them in terms of making it much harder to read with their dyslexia, not to mention the headache of having to relearn a UI for no good reason for people with fine motor control problems.

I know it's a plea that may fall on plugged ears, but at the very least all I'd ask for is a way to toggle this update off (for all of you who enjoy this design change, I don't get it but you have your opinions) or in the future for these sort of things to be preceded by an announcement or trial run with users.

Cessna

February 06, 2020 05:45

Completely agree.

Lyarrah

February 06, 2020 12:03

This. I'm seeing many posts complaining about the UI changes but this one does the best job of explaining why it's actually a problem and not just a standard "they changed it now it sucks" pushback.

The menu flashing as you scroll is very noticeable, the giant NEW is distracting and the brightest thing on the page and completely unnecessary, not to mention the font is so scrunched it's basically illegible anyway.

The lack of small lines between the different messages makes the whole screen into one big block. I tried fiddling with various settings before complaining, too, and none of them seem to improve it in the least :/ adding spacing between lines doesn't actually separate them the way the little lines did. I'm fortunate enough to not have dyslexia or anything similar, but I'm still literally getting a headache and eye strain trying to read anything on discord right now.

The previous design has been in play for at least a year from what I can tell, with no changes to at least the main chat box during that time. This is a major step backwards in terms of accessibility, and I would thank you guys to at least add a "classic" option to the styles if not revert this entirely.

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