Light Theme feedback from a UX perspective regarding focus

I know you guys are getting a million of these, but I really wanted to share my thoughts on the new theme and why it hasn't been very well received from a user experience perspective. After getting my initial distaste for the new light theme out of my system I took a step back to look objectively about why I dislike all light colors for discord, but for things like web pages, and other applications it doesn't bother me. The conclusion I came to was that it's all about about areas of focus.

As an example let's take a word processor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Nearly 40% of the screen is just a very light gray emptiness as a background to the pure white doc. Like the new light theme the entire application is white or white-ish, but it doesn't end up being a big deal because you practically never look at all that blank space.

As a second case let's take a website like stackoverflow.com. Their left and right sidebars are also white but its the same as google docs where all your attention is on the center of the page. Yes, unlike the word processor there's actually content on the sides this time, but the primary content of the page are the question and answers down the center column. On the left is are some basic navigation links and on the right are miscellaneous things like blog posts and related or trending questions. None of these elements pertain to the primary subject matter of the page and generally won't be consuming the user's attention until they are finished looking over the content in the middle.

Now I can only speak for myself and a few others I've talked about this with, but when I use Discord I find that I frequently look at the sidebar in order to check for new messages in other servers and channels. As an admin I need to stay on top of conversations happening throughout the server and as a user there are often other parallel conversations in other servers or channels that I'm participating in. As a result my eyes are constantly flitting back and forth between the main chat pane and the sidebar, and this is the issue of focus that I run into.

Unlike in word processors or the majority of web pages, in Discord focus is split between the sidebar and the main chat pane. In the old light theme, the dark sidebar provided fantastic contrast against the light chat pane. It gave the eyes something different to look at, and was an easy way to signal to the brain that these two parts are distinct in form and function. That may seem like a silly and obvious thing to state, but when it comes to frequently repeated activity these little shortcuts add up. The new light theme loses that delineation of focus, and the sense of balance between the two it used to have. Everything just sort of... blends together.

xKillua

13 september 2019 21:41

You put into words exactly what's happening to me when I look at the new Light theme. Now I've had to go Dark, because that at least has SOME difference in shades of black. Looking at the inverted colors in the text areas bothers me, but at least it doesn't make my head feel like I'm looking at something overwhelming. I don't like Dark theme, but my brain simply cannot accept looking at the new Light theme without feeling scrambled.

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