22
A user complained my dark mode text was 'too clean' - took me 2 days to figure out what they meant
This person emailed me saying my dark theme for a recipe blog looked 'sterile like a hospital waiting room.' I was so confused because I had followed all the usual guidelines - proper contrast ratios, no pure black backgrounds, soft gray text. Then I realized they meant the font choices and spacing was too perfect. They wanted a bit of texture, like slightly less line height and a warmer font. I tweaked the letter-spacing down by 0.5px and added a 2% warm tint to the grays. Now it feels cozier without breaking accessibility. Has anyone else gotten feedback that boiled down to 'make it feel less designed'?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
keith_henderson8d agoMost Upvoted
MAN, that "sterile like a hospital" comment is brutal but SO accurate. I actually read a book about how interfaces that are TOO mathematically perfect feel wrong to people. There's this whole idea that humans are wired for a little bit of mess, like how handwritten notes look better than perfect fonts sometimes. @lucas159's coffee joke is pretty funny but honestly, a 2% warm tint is exactly the kind of tweak that makes a huge difference. I had a similar situation where someone said my site looked "too clinical" and I fixed it by just rounding off a few sharp corners and picking a less robotic font. It's wild how small changes can flip the whole feeling of a page.
5