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This is such a bizarre response that I'm wondering if it's sarcastic or something. To a paraphrase you (but really not much IMO), there are only two types of p

This is such a bizarre response that I'm wondering if it's sarcastic or something. To a paraphrase you (but really not much IMO), there are only two types of people in the world: those who have rMBPs (in the same lighting and calibration your page was designed in, with the same eyes and brain you have), and those who don't. (And it doesn't even appear you were using these as two extremes with a spectrum in between, because you said "Very rarely will these two overlap.") Somehow, you know exactly which part your audience belongs to and what they "find attractive", and you don't care if they disagree, or might have been interested in your content but it's not working because they are on the opposite of the "rMBP binary" side you chose. Even if some of this is true, thinking "very rarely will they overlap" seems so short-sighted.. you're just going to turn away possible users because you decided your product is niche enough that you can predict exactly what environment (electronic, biological, and physical) your user is viewing it through? I mean, I knew the stereotype that designers are opinionated, but this is a whole new level...

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
it's not working because they are on the opposite of the "rMBP binary" side you chose It's a losing cause. It's not just the person you're responding to, even Apple does the same. I'm running OS X 10.10 on my desktop and it is OK, so I tried it on my non-retina Macbook Pro. But the overall appearance, including the fonts, was just "yeech". I'm not a graphic designer and so I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was wrong. But a bunch of fiddling around with fonts and Accessibility didn't help. So I reverted to OS X 10.8 and everything is nice again. Time Machine made it so so so easy to revert.
ryanSrich 11y ago
I most certainly didn't say there are only two types of people in the world. My comment clearly focused on designing around the user. Your user is different than my user, etc. I simply supplied two common use cases. It's also a matter of designing around net positivity. If 70% of my users respond positively to a design then I've done pretty well. 30% in most cases is a small number. That doesn't mean alienating and ignoring that 30%, but it also doesn't mean throwing out the approval of the 70%. It's a compromise. (I didn't think I needed to be so explicit in my first comment). Larger products, let's say Facebook, even 1% is a million users. So of course they can't ignore them. I've obviously struck a sensitive chord here with the HN crowd so I won't go any further.
- scintill76 11y ago
  The more general version of your argument makes more sense, but I still think you are taking for granted that you can know your users that well, and how much "your user is different than my user" really applies. You don't seem to account for the magnitude of how positively/negatively the user is responding. If 70% of your users rate it a +2 on a scale of -5 to +5, and 30% rate it -4, that would seem to meet your scenario, but is that really a good goal, to be barely tolerable to a "mere" 30%? Maybe I'm being fallacious here since my own argument is that you won't have data that good, but I mean it as an analogy for why I disagree with the idea of knowingly pushing a design that won't work for some users. Around here at least, it's weird to bake the assumption of a non-large product into your design philosophy. You don't want to have a large, diverse userbase? Is your design actually defining who your userbase is, rather than the other way around? If you want that, we can't stop you, but it seems strange to us.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago

it's not working because they are on the opposite of the "rMBP binary" side you chose It's a losing cause. It's not just the person you're responding to, even Apple does the same. I'm running OS X 10.10 on my desktop and it is OK, so I tried it on my non-retina Macbook Pro. But the overall appearance, including the fonts, was just "yeech". I'm not a graphic designer and so I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was wrong. But a bunch of fiddling around with fonts and Accessibility didn't help. So I reverted to OS X 10.8 and everything is nice again. Time Machine made it so so so easy to revert.

ryanSrich 11y ago

I most certainly didn't say there are only two types of people in the world. My comment clearly focused on designing around the user. Your user is different than my user, etc. I simply supplied two common use cases. It's also a matter of designing around net positivity. If 70% of my users respond positively to a design then I've done pretty well. 30% in most cases is a small number. That doesn't mean alienating and ignoring that 30%, but it also doesn't mean throwing out the approval of the 70%. It's a compromise. (I didn't think I needed to be so explicit in my first comment). Larger products, let's say Facebook, even 1% is a million users. So of course they can't ignore them. I've obviously struck a sensitive chord here with the HN crowd so I won't go any further.

scintill76 11y ago
The more general version of your argument makes more sense, but I still think you are taking for granted that you can know your users that well, and how much "your user is different than my user" really applies. You don't seem to account for the magnitude of how positively/negatively the user is responding. If 70% of your users rate it a +2 on a scale of -5 to +5, and 30% rate it -4, that would seem to meet your scenario, but is that really a good goal, to be barely tolerable to a "mere" 30%? Maybe I'm being fallacious here since my own argument is that you won't have data that good, but I mean it as an analogy for why I disagree with the idea of knowingly pushing a design that won't work for some users. Around here at least, it's weird to bake the assumption of a non-large product into your design philosophy. You don't want to have a large, diverse userbase? Is your design actually defining who your userbase is, rather than the other way around? If you want that, we can't stop you, but it seems strange to us.