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Update: I was picking website colors based on my own taste for 6 months before a user test proved I was wrong.
I watched a client in Portland squint at a button for 10 seconds during a recorded session and finally understood the problem was my color contrast, not their attention span.
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emma_young2mo ago
That's why user testing beats just trusting your gut every time.
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uma8962mo ago
beats just trusting your gut" lol is it really that deep? sometimes your gut is right and you don't need a whole study for every little thing.
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terry_mitchell12d ago
@uma896 yeah but what if the button colors were picked to match your favorite sports team and not what works for the widest range of people? I feel like there's a hidden middle ground here where you don't need a full study every time, but you also shouldn't ignore what 50 random people are telling you about basic readability. The real trick is knowing when your gut is just personal preference dressed up as intuition and when it's actually a solid design choice backed by experience.
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theabennett12d ago
Why is user testing automatically the winner here? Sometimes your gut is summing up years of experience faster than a fresh set of eyes can, especially if those testers don't know your audience. I've had user tests give me bad advice because the testers weren't the actual target users, so I think there's room for trusting your instincts when you know the context better than anyone else.
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