New layout extremely hostile towards people with disabilities
I'm sure there has been several complaints about this already, but I want to add my voice to this as it's extremely important especially for people with disabilities who use Discord daily.
First of all, I want to complain about the colors. Especially the new use of burple. I'm Autistic, I've been diagnosed since I was 10 (originally diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome) and I've always been super sensitive to colors. I use colors that are neutral as the ones that are not neutral tend to put a strain on my eyes, especially when I sit in a dark room, and it's not fun getting a headache from just looking at a picture or colors. The previous burple color was amazing; I'm not sure what hex it was, but this one is WAY too strong and causes a strain on my eyes just by looking at it.
Not only that, but the new advertising campaign, the new "logo" and font is very much causing the same issues. The colors are WAY too bright and hostile on the eyes. Strain on the eyes, uncomfortable to read, uncomfortable to see. I think the previous Discord logo/font was better one as it was so unique to Discord and actually was amazing since it was accessible AND beautiful. Like what the hell is wrong with this logo?! It is GREAT. There is absolutely no need to change it.
Oh and PLEASE drop the Alegria "art" style. It's the WORST, Soul-less 2D corporate art-style out there which genuinely makes me feel less included than anything else with it's hostile colors and boring "modern" appearance. Like seriously, stop simplifying already simplified things. The previous one, which contained Wumpus without hostile colors and soft shading (seen here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210316001221/https://discord.com/ ) is one of the best styles of art out there and it's actually something I enjoyed looking at. Not only do the webpage look very soft and non-hostile; the text also is very comfortable to read and accessible for people with disabilities.
While the chat has gotten some changes too, it's mostly the same complaints that have been showed elsewhere; the font is horrible, it's hard to look at, the new emote reaction bubble is too large and causes too much of a "disturbance" in the chat when reacting to something and so on. I'm sure the countless other threads with people pointing this out is good enough.
So please, at least give us an option to opt out of these needless UI updates! Especially as an autistic person, this UI update is one of the worst, if not the worst of all time due to the hostility and needless changes that makes NO sense.
Thanks!
Edit: I wrote a longer explanation/clarification to my post here: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500001050842/comments/1500000914381
-
THANK you for writing this all out so I didn't have to
55 -
Here's a comparison between the old and new UI. Can anyone GENUINELY say these colors aren't hostile to the eye and the font is easier to read? It's so saddening. I understand corporations don't care about my feelings, but as someone who has used Discord since 2015 and has supported Discord with Nitro since Nitro came out, it's just extremely frustrating seeing this change take place.
Please revert to the old style. There was absolutely no need for this change.
143 -
this exactly
29 -
Sign the Petition: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500001001941--ChangeItBack-OFFICIAL-PETITION-182-THREADS-COUNTED
Join the discord: https://discord.gg/fPpdgPathk67 -
Yes!! All of this!! I have adhd and dyslexia and this new font is SUPER hard for me to read, especially with the overly bright colors!! Even just the option to use the old font/colors would be great
41 -
I asked a friend of mine, who has migraines and other disabilities too, about the changes and he gave me permission to share the comments here.
He commented specifically on the dark theme. The new dark theme is extremely unfriendly to him and causes a huge strain on his eyes, leading to him getting migraines almost instantly. He does get a lot of migraines from other social medias, and said he specifically uses Discord to avoid those other social medias as they tend to worsen things for him, and therefore stays in contact with his classmates and other important people through Discord.
He said that the new theme is almost unacceptable, and has the same complaints as I've expressed in the previous comment(s). The colors are too harsh, the font is too unreadable, in general the whole redesign causes him more issues than it's worth.
Even so, several friends of mine who aren't disabled have expressed similar distaste for the whole redesign with the same complaints as mentioned.
66 -
OG Blurple is the most amazing color
39 -
This sucks, change it back.
27 -
OG blurple is the best color i've ever seen in my entire life, please give it back.
34 -
OP phrased it beautifully. The bright colours and aggressive font, i can agree, do make it more disorientating and over-stimulating. Recent changes meant to make things more accessible, just get in the way and become eyesored. Hope there can be at least an option to opt out recent UI updates , or at least the choices in colours schemes. Felt like putting my opinion out here, just to add on.
31 -
Thank you so much for this post you said everything what I wanted to say !!<3
13 -
as someone with red-green colorblindness and relatively bad eyesight, i second this COMPLETELY
the old theme and colors were pretty easy to look at and understand, even from a distance, but these new colors legitimately hurt to look at and are tenfold harder to look at
PLEASE reconsider this awful redesign, discord
23 -
Yes!!! This new redesign is very alienating for users, especially those with accessibility issues. The new font is difficult to read and the new colors physically hurt my eyes, especially that very neon purple “blurple” and ping color.
Please listen to the user base and at least bring back the previous font and colors as a theme!!!
18 -
Seeing that comparison Rain posted... I- I ???? I actually have no words. At this point I think they're purposely redesigning it to look inaccessible, unreadable and painful to the eyes. No one would make a change like that and think "ah yes, this looks better". I just don't think it's possible.
I'm glad OP also mentioned the alegria or corporate memphis. It's a godawful art style created so artists will always be replaceable by cheaper artmonkeys. The art style makes me feel absolutely dreadful. These weird, monstrous looking uncanny valley non-people make me super uncomfortable whether I see them on Discord, Facebook, Google or anything. It's all the same, it's all so soulless. It reminds me of the folks who call people 'bodies'. Because that's what the style is... just, bodies. Dehumanized humans.
23 -
Fully agreed! The new color scheme is extremely bad to look at; even just seeing embedded channel names and reacts on the app is painful now. The old, softer colors were very nice and didn't need any improving on, especially without the option to switch back.
13 -
Honestly, everything else I could learn to live with, but the blurple is horrendous.
4 -
as someone with seizures.... this update is. uh. inaccessible at the least
11 -
Okay, hi, this post took off. I'll try to redefine my points even better considering this post is now the 5th most liked here. I know I was reactionary in the first post, so I'll be trying to make this more constructive criticism, or streamline my points and hope that I get my point across.
1. The font, the slogan - Why? As mentioned by several other people, the new font is absolutely terrible and ugly. It's packed, it's cramped and hard to read and it makes me confused why the change happened. The old Discord logo was sleek, had cut edges but was readable and iconic - to suddenly change it down to look like it was directed towards kids made in a word document seems just out of place. Not to mention the font, because of it's complexity, makes it hard for dyslexic people to read, and even several neurotypical people have complained about misreading the text because it's so complicated.
And then the slogan. Imagine a place? Imagine what place? "Imagine a place" doesn't tell anything! "Your place to talk" was actually pretty direct and gave an idea what Discord was about. It is a chat place for people where, simply put, it's your place to talk. The only thing that comes to my mind from "Imagine a place" is the celebrities singing Imagine in quarantine which is not a positive image.
Simply put, the previous design was perfect and there was no need to change it.
2. Clyde! - I have to admit, I liked previous Clyde more, but the new one isn't a big deal. But nobody has ever called the Discord logo ugly from what I've seen. I know people are saying "the Clyde change isn't too bad..." and I admit, the changes are subtle and almost non-noticable. Clyde, or the Discord logo, was already very simplified as it is so I don't understand why the change. I admit though, it isn't too big of a deal since many of Clyde's details weren't visible if the logo was small, so I would propose here to use the new Clyde logo in small icons where the details are not needed (such as browser tab icon) and then use old Clyde elsewhere (like on the client, in logos etc). Like sure, in the blog post it said old Clyde was asymmetrical; then just fix that. Clyde was fine as is. Nobody cared about the asymmetrical features, nobody even noticed it as far as I could tell.
3. The colors on the redesign #BringBackBurple. - OK, so this is essentially my whole first post summarized in a nutshell. The new colors are causing a MASSIVE strain on the eye, the blue is way too strong and especially for people with disabilities, this change is the WORST of all time. I understand where they were trying to go with the whole "Yea let's give people the option to recolor the client" but nooo, this isn't right. The colors are extremely stimulating and causes disorientation, overstimulation and generally just pain in the eyes and an eyestrain. The previous burple color (blue-purple) was calming, soft and not a pain on the eye, which is a huge reason I preferred to use Discord since the early days.
The colors are not great in the client either - since the new burple was introduced, it's also been extremely confusing to me in-client to look at chat. I'm moderating several chats, and it very often becomes overwhelming for me when I look at the chat when people ping someone else because the new ping color is way too dark and keeps making me thing I am getting pinged. That's not ok. It's making the app less accessible to people like me. The previous ping color was fine - the one where it put the burple overlay on the person that was pinged. Simply put again, it needed no change.
I've included a chart which has been floating on the internet for ages. The color section in particular relate to this post.
And speaking of colors - I genuinely miss the old webpage. It had dark colors and it was actually very nice to look at. While the burple webpage (as posted above by me) was also great, this one is definitely the best webpage Discord ever had. It's sleek, it's cute, it's artsy. It's 2D, but it is unique 2D. I loved it. So did everyone else. Sure, it might be directed towards gaming, but why not make the background change so it's going from maybe a gaming setup, to an art setup, to something else? Like a slideshow of different backgrounds of different communities to show the diversity of groups on Discord.
4. UI Changes - Gathered from a lot of people, this UI change is confusing too. Not only are the colors too bright, it's also very confusing when someone reacts to a message because the message because the reaction is way too intrusive and it's only fixed by turning off all reactions - which isn't exactly something you want to do considering bots use reaction verifications and if you moderate larger servers this is a large hinder as you can't filter out bad emotes. I saw a lot of other better posts about the UI change, but in general, nobody likes the UI changes since they weren't needed and generally, it's just more confusing.
5. Where's Wumpus?! - I know Wumpus is a huge mascot for Discord and has been since Day 1, but somehow my friends are reporting Wumpus is not anywhere in the new redesign. Removing a mascot that's basically been the face of Discord like this seems genuinely weird, especially in an effort to rebrand - like, is this an effort to alienate the millions of people who already use Discord? Or is this an effort to alienate your original base of people?
I understand you want to reach out to new people. But you do understand that millions are already using Discord - and people join into Discord because of what it is, as several in real life friends of mine have - not because of the rebranding. The rebranding will just serve to push the original people further away, especially those who are invested in Discord or have disabilities - like this update has showed.
6. Alegria art sucks - Tied to the complaint about the webpage and the colors, the colors on Alegria art are meant to be contrasting and therefore they are terrible by default. I will repeat my thought, Alegria art is a soul-less, 2D corporation art-style that just alienates so many people. I have never met a person who thinks Alegria art is nice. It's genuinely a terrible art-style; in my opinion, it's not even art because it's so simplified and flat. Like who cares about a shoe with living features? It's not inclusive. Who cares about two "creatures" sitting in a dining table? Not relatable and not inclusive. If anything, like Brumbpo mentioned, they are just in the uncanny valley and not relatable. They aren't fun, quirky, they are just dehumanized bodies sitting. Contrast that to my point 5 with Wumpus, Wumpus was a mascot and a thing that people actually could associate Discord with. It wasn't dehumanized bodies, it wasn't the uncanny valley of corporation art (which is, frankly, extremely alienated from the people and I will vehemently protest) and it was cute.
From my understanding the previous web page was already Alegria art, but the soft colors, shading and general people (as well as Wumpus!) made it more relatable and actually nice to look at, and not something that screams "look at me, I'm a big tech corporation". Because, in the end, Alegria art is something that is associated with big tech corporations and not liked AT ALL by the majority of the people, which could be figured out with a quick google search - because keep in mind, majority of the users are from other places than where Discord is based on, and I'm sure there are other graphics designers in other countries who will criticize Alegria art as much as I do.
Which is, once again, I refer to my own post a few posts back in this thread. Can you genuinely look at the web page, the text, the colors and go "Yup. This new one is better"? The colors are so hostile on the new one, especially on the characters. Wumpus is - and has always had a soft shade of blue, which has been great. The main reason why people never commented on the previous webpage - or Clyde, or Wumpus - was because it didn't need change. Those who complained are in the minority. Most people, when they are happy or content, they are silent. I'm one of those people - if there's nothing to complain about, I will be silent.
7. Please bring back the original gamer loading screens. I know they were removed a while ago, but I genuinely miss the loading texts. I realized it was people on twitter who wanted it removed - but Twitter is not representative of real life OR the majority people's representation. Twitter often contains more or less the minority of the people. Maybe give us an option to turn that feature back on? :(
And last but not least...
8. Listen to the community! I really want to emphasize this one.
Personally, I've been on Discord since July the 21st, 2015. I've bought Nitro since the first day it existed because I wanted to support Discord. I know several people who've come to Discord after it was made, I've known several people who've joined Discord since day 1. I've seen Discord when it had no dark mode and Light mode was the only feature available.
This backlash against the redesign is the BIGGEST one I've seen Discord ever receiving. I'm not kidding. I remember many a changes happening, and the last notable backlash with some kind of degree of similarity was when Discord implemented the "reply, reaction, delete" bubble that floated over messages that caused performance issues, crashing and other accessibility issues. But even that, nothing compares to the backlash this redesign has gotten.
A user by the name of ConiumLachulatum on reddit made this graph to show how many negative comments they, at the time (13th of May) recorded on the blog post. And like the trend shows, it's not very positive the comments to this rebranding - to simply put, nobody liked this, nobody wanted this.
The same trend follows on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of social media. Even Reddit hates this change. On Instagram, comments like "Is this a joke", "Is this April fools day?" and other similar ones take the top spots with thousands of likes, where people beg this redesign to be reverted. Same thing with Twitter - although Twitters algorithm is extremely preferential to those who like the redesign, people - and even Discord themselves got "ratio'd" by the old "bring back old logo". Nobody likes it there either, which is extreme considering the algorithmic preference.
The fact that this is so overwhelmingly disliked shows that this is probably one of the biggest design fails any corporation has ever done. So please, listen to the community!
I went through so many posts here on the feedback forum and found so many good feedback recommendations and stuff that I genuinely thought where nice. If you truly want to change something for the birthday, or add some nice features, there are an abundance of recommendations - or even people who've made amazing stuff themselves. Work together with them! Reach out to the people who've helped Discord and made great stuff and ask them to cooperate with you. I saw a post earlier on this Feedback forum entailing a person who made several new stock avatar suggestions - like Clyde with a monocle, clyde with a top hat, Clyde with a moustache etc. Those are cute - those are quirky and actually something that would be a great addition. But that's just one of many recommendations and I still feel like it doesn't do me justice saying who to pick or who to not pick.
If you really want to change or do something nice for Discord's birthday, listen to the users! Poll the users! Communicate with the users! That's how you build a platform that people like and don't feel alienated on. And especially, communicate with people with disabilities to see if these changes you want to implement are as harmful - like this redesign and color update. Considering this is the largest negative backlash I've ever seen in my 6 years of being on Discord, it should tell a lot - coming from a person with disabilities who have recorded several other people with disabilities posting they also find the update harmful and even neurotypicals disliking it.So I want to close this post by saying thanks for taking the time to read it - if Discord does read this - and I really, really hope you reconsider this whole design.
50 -
I noticed that Discord replied to someone’s concerns about accessibility with a feedback form! I filled it out already, so I hope others in this thread do as well to let them know how inaccessible and garish the new colors, font, etc. are for users.
Link to their tweet about it: https://twitter.com/discord/status/1392869194413355009
Link to their Google form feedback itself: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTzNbITTRx4BYWFlC3gi_lEi3D3rsa9VCBK_EphF5myDb7uw/viewformThey claim accessibility is taken very seriously, so let’s be sure to inform them of how difficult these new changes are for people.
16 -
I fully agree. I've found the new colors to be distracting and hard to look at, and it makes Discord harder to use.
8 -
Good post, I hope discord does something about it as my eyes are in active pain from the new update. I'm not entirely sure why they decided to go for such harsh colours.
7 -
I filled out the form, it seems like they are taking this seriously. However, they're hiding it and should tweet publicly about it. Hiding it behind this form and not telling anybody about it is shady. It's like they don't want people to know about it. Tell your friends, share it.
I have executive function problems and it's really hard for me to use the platform now. The reactions are way too distracting from the content, the color shading makes unimportant things seem important, and the new fonts make everything harder to read. I already have a hard enough time reading.
I'm sure other people have problems that are similar to mine, and others that have different problems. Please take the time to answer the form, and let them know that you would be willing to offer them more feedback if it's comfortable for you.
7 -
They said they've seen the feedback on Reddit. But then they also avoided actually answering anything, refused to call their plans a 'fix', and when pressed to actually answer the question shut down the thread. Really doesn't bode well.
4 -
Big yikes D:
2 -
So far discords public comments have been highly discouraging yes. Feels like a wait for it to blow over strategy.
I mean they probably spent a lot of money on the redesign, advertisement of it and so on. I can see that making it harder to go back on it from a purely money standpoint.
5 -
Finally, a fellow “spectrumite” (people using “autistic” as an insult term has discouraged me from using it, or I’d have addressed you as that), who also struggles with the colors!! THANK YOU SO MUCH for clearly describing what I felt-but-didn’t-know-how-to-say!!
I’d offer you a Discord friend request in a heartbeat, if I knew your tag to do so.
3 -
It's been now about two weeks since Discord made these changes and there has been no acknowledgement publicly of the changes being harmful. I've spent the past two weeks with almost daily headaches which gets a lot worse whenever I do interact in Discord, which is sad considering I have no other option to talk with friends in.
The only acknowledgements we've gotten is on reddit's r/Discordapp and even then, most of the criticism is swept under the rug or played off as a "let's wait for this to blow over". Nobody wants this to blow over, especially when it's extremely painful on the eyes.Is there any chance we could get an update from any staff about the changes? The questions I would have is the following:
Can we get back the burple color?
If so, when can we expect that?
Did they read through this topic and have they acknowledged the changes and issues we have with the change?
Are they making internal changes or tweaks on the matter, or are Discord waiting for the "drama" to blow over?
3 -
It’s the silence that’s the worst. I get hopeful every time they start to engage, and then somebody asked a question that everybody wants to know the answer to. An important question. And immediately they deflect. And immediately they start the double speak. And the PR speak. And then they stop responding again.
We need concrete answers. We need to know that we’ve actually been heard.2 -
Im colorblind and thanks to this update now I can see shit on the buttons. Lets thank to Discord for making this wonderful update!! 😁🖕🖕🖕
-6 -
So… you got yours and screw the rest of us @jonny11? I mean, I’m glad it increases your usability but it should have __options__. It’s not one size fits all and it’s really ungracious of you to be celebrating other disabled people being marginalized.
1
U moet u aanmelden om een opmerking te plaatsen.
Opmerkingen
38 opmerkingen