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It's not just developers, and it's not just about speed, it's also designers / UX bods who need to heed this. My decently powered work laptop from job 1 has a f

It's not just developers, and it's not just about speed, it's also designers / UX bods who need to heed this. My decently powered work laptop from job 1 has a fairly rubbish screen, which means that a lot of the subtle hover effects, 1 pixel light grey on lighter grey divisions and skinny fonts either aren't visible or are incredibly difficult to see. A good trick if you're working on a large, hi res screen is to have a small and crappy second monitor hooked up if you're doing any UI work so you can see what it will actually look like to a lot of your users.

scns 5y ago
This is done quite often in audio production. The Auratones mimicking real world consumer equipment, ie mono, low bass and a rolloff at the top, had a revival because of that. Another company offers speakers the correlate to the ones in TVs, for audio engineers in the movie industry. The body is made from the same material as TVs are and they have no parallel walls.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Will echo this. It’s astounding how bad the worst laptop screens are, and how many machines that you’d think have decent screens don’t (like many Thinkpad models, which used to and still might by default come with some of the worst TN panels I’ve ever seen). I once had to do some photoshop work on one such machine and it was nigh unusable because many details weren’t or were only barely visible. So while I wouldn’t recommend making a screen like that one’s primary screen, yes absolutely test on it periodically.
kiririn 5y ago
This is one area that really grinds my gears: the trend in UI design to reduce contrast because full black on full white text is too contrasty. Whatever minor improvement in readability on their quality 3000:1 contrast ratio monitor pales in comparison to the loss in readability on a 200:1 trash TN display. Even on a good display at low brightness low contrast design choices can be infuriating (e.g. phone at min brightness in pitch dark room)
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I honestly don't get why we just don't have options. That's what we did back in the Dark Ages for things like resolutions. Let people set whether they want high or low contrast. I also feel this re: dark and light modes, as somebody whose astigmatism makes dark mode LESS usable than light mode. I get it, dark mode is awesome for most people. Please don't make it mandatory.
Mezzie 5y ago
It's because to many, aesthetics > function. This drives me INSANE. If you make a UX that most people can't use for reasons a, b, and c, who CARES how pretty it looks? This is also true for accessibility, especially for older people who are more likely to have reading issues and presbyopia. Everything is designed for 22 year olds with perfect vision and the best hardware. It's often on the marketing and exec teams. I had to be very firm in some of our UX decisions because yes, it does look a little less polished this way, but a lot of our audience is elderly and they need to be able to read what we're giving them. And this isn't even getting into how many sites break if you have any accessibility shortcuts or defaults set up on your browser. I'm slightly visually impaired and have pages set to load at 150% zoom (on a 4k monitor) and a minimum font size of 12. It's absurd how many sites that breaks.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  At least where I have worked, UX people are evaluated by whether the PM is happy when approving it. Even for myself as a dev, the part of my job people care about is the rate tickets move from "Selected for development" to "Done" while still passing tests. You will need to change the minds of PMs.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    Luckily, I don't work in tech (I do tech work in a non-tech company/non tech team [I'm the only one with any coding or cs skills]), and this right here is why. I work in communications and own the marketing decisions for my department so I generally have strong decision rights when I do UI/UX/design work. Downside is I don't make nearly as much, but I definitely prefer the respect and autonomy.
wildrhythms 5y ago
I work in web development at a major, well-known company. My top of mind is exactly what the article is reflecting: how will this product/feature perform on a craptop/low power ChromeOS device/cheap smartphone that isn't even sold in the U.S.? I can say first hand that our designers do not care about this. I have never heard any concerns around this even so much as uttered. I think part of this is due to a rigid 'design system' that, if adjusted to better accommodate for our craptop, etc. users, would require updating many other products to keep consistent. Thus, the problem is handwaved away with "that problem is only reflected on x% of DAU." There is so much design/development guidance around screen width, breakpoints, contrast ratio, accessibility and so forth, but so little around "real world" testing on low-tier devices. Every designer is using a 5K display with perfect color and definition, or an iMac with a super fast processor and tons of memory; our users are not.

scns 5y ago

This is done quite often in audio production. The Auratones mimicking real world consumer equipment, ie mono, low bass and a rolloff at the top, had a revival because of that. Another company offers speakers the correlate to the ones in TVs, for audio engineers in the movie industry. The body is made from the same material as TVs are and they have no parallel walls.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Will echo this. It’s astounding how bad the worst laptop screens are, and how many machines that you’d think have decent screens don’t (like many Thinkpad models, which used to and still might by default come with some of the worst TN panels I’ve ever seen). I once had to do some photoshop work on one such machine and it was nigh unusable because many details weren’t or were only barely visible. So while I wouldn’t recommend making a screen like that one’s primary screen, yes absolutely test on it periodically.

kiririn 5y ago

This is one area that really grinds my gears: the trend in UI design to reduce contrast because full black on full white text is too contrasty. Whatever minor improvement in readability on their quality 3000:1 contrast ratio monitor pales in comparison to the loss in readability on a 200:1 trash TN display. Even on a good display at low brightness low contrast design choices can be infuriating (e.g. phone at min brightness in pitch dark room)

Mezzie 5y ago
I honestly don't get why we just don't have options. That's what we did back in the Dark Ages for things like resolutions. Let people set whether they want high or low contrast. I also feel this re: dark and light modes, as somebody whose astigmatism makes dark mode LESS usable than light mode. I get it, dark mode is awesome for most people. Please don't make it mandatory.

Mezzie 5y ago

It's because to many, aesthetics > function. This drives me INSANE. If you make a UX that most people can't use for reasons a, b, and c, who CARES how pretty it looks? This is also true for accessibility, especially for older people who are more likely to have reading issues and presbyopia. Everything is designed for 22 year olds with perfect vision and the best hardware. It's often on the marketing and exec teams. I had to be very firm in some of our UX decisions because yes, it does look a little less polished this way, but a lot of our audience is elderly and they need to be able to read what we're giving them. And this isn't even getting into how many sites break if you have any accessibility shortcuts or defaults set up on your browser. I'm slightly visually impaired and have pages set to load at 150% zoom (on a 4k monitor) and a minimum font size of 12. It's absurd how many sites that breaks.

MattGaiser 5y ago
At least where I have worked, UX people are evaluated by whether the PM is happy when approving it. Even for myself as a dev, the part of my job people care about is the rate tickets move from "Selected for development" to "Done" while still passing tests. You will need to change the minds of PMs.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  Luckily, I don't work in tech (I do tech work in a non-tech company/non tech team [I'm the only one with any coding or cs skills]), and this right here is why. I work in communications and own the marketing decisions for my department so I generally have strong decision rights when I do UI/UX/design work. Downside is I don't make nearly as much, but I definitely prefer the respect and autonomy.

wildrhythms 5y ago

I work in web development at a major, well-known company. My top of mind is exactly what the article is reflecting: how will this product/feature perform on a craptop/low power ChromeOS device/cheap smartphone that isn't even sold in the U.S.? I can say first hand that our designers do not care about this. I have never heard any concerns around this even so much as uttered. I think part of this is due to a rigid 'design system' that, if adjusted to better accommodate for our craptop, etc. users, would require updating many other products to keep consistent. Thus, the problem is handwaved away with "that problem is only reflected on x% of DAU." There is so much design/development guidance around screen width, breakpoints, contrast ratio, accessibility and so forth, but so little around "real world" testing on low-tier devices. Every designer is using a 5K display with perfect color and definition, or an iMac with a super fast processor and tons of memory; our users are not.