Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment?
No. No it doesn't.
1. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career is not going to produce good advice for me.
2. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyeballs. They're grading experiences on a bell curve and taking the median. We all experience things differently. This is the "fighter jet seat problem" - if you use the average then it fits no-one.
3. Even if I had average eyeballs (and I probably do), I doubt my situation is anything like the test subjects in the experiments. My home office isn't set up that well (I'm working on it).
4. My research, conducted using my eyeballs in my home office on my equipment, shows I prefer dark mode. I have tried both, and dark mode was the more comfortable experience. My experiment beats "multiple studies" for my situation. Yours may be different.
Science is not a faith based system. If you doubt about the rigor of some study, by all means point the errors you find. In the meantime, I will trust those scientific studies more than subjective opinions in hackernews comments.
The study referenced by his reference is not very good.[1]
They use full white and full black for all modes. As we know, dark theme is typically white on dark gray (or equivalent), not pure white on pure black. I can't think of any dark mode that uses pure black. (AOSP, IOS, macOS, etc.)
This alone invalidates the study, because it doesn't reflect the real world. Science is only as good as it is rigorous, and if it fails to model the real world, then it's not very good.
Science, these days, seems to have become a faith based system, because most people don't usually review the content of the studies.
That (and bad science, like this study) is a shame.
"Invalidates" might be a bit strong, since it still does show that white on black isn't a great choice. It just doesn't follow from the study that the average dark theme is worse than the average light theme.
> Science, these days, seems to have become a faith based system
> That (and bad science, like this study) is a shame.
Tangential, but this has indeed been a slow drift since the 1970s roughly. We are witnessing the consequences of that, now that entire generations of academics have been molded as such.
I think we need a vocal and principled reaffirmation of Positivism in science, to meaningfully move away from all the faith-based and broadly political conduct of scientific affairs at large (and the reporting thereof).
90% is a gross exaggeration. The Mail app is pure black[0]. Apps that have grey on black like Messages have styles carried over from the light version of apps — they weren’t specifically optimized for dark mode to improve readability. Other apps that I’ve checked: Music, Phone, Photos, Files, Calendar, even Twitter.
Blues exist along a range of brightness values and blues work great in dark terminals and editors all day every day for many many people. I'm typing into a browser window surrounded by probably about 4 or 5 terminal and editor windows peeking out of the background with somewhere between 5 and 10 different shades of blue on dark grey backgrounds and they look clear, bright, and amazing. The dark background makes the blues pop.
or green like the Hombebrew default scheme in Terminal. non-techy people I used to work with called me the matrix because my screen was stacked with multiple terminal windows with the green text on dark background color scheme
All of those studies are studies of how other people experienced dark mode vs. normal mode.
All of my studies are studies of how I experience dark mode vs. normal mode.
I feel that my sample more closely aligns to the population I'm trying to study.
Also it mentions spectrum-shifting software like 'night light' or f.lux or whatever Android and Windows call it when they do this by default.
And the thing about dark-on-white being more visible than white-on-dark is just blatantly wrong and the military anecdote makes no sense, camo against dark background in the dark is going to be low contrast because the camo you wear in the dark is dark, muted colours.
It's easy to be wrong even about your own perception. You might think you like the dark mode because it strains your eyes less, but in reality you just like how it looks and you strain your eyes more, being more fatigued at the end of the day without even noticing. Or the other direction.
This whole "those studies are studies of how other people experienced X" is a typical argumentation scheme of esoteric fields like homeopathy, where science, logic and data is completely rejected and replaced with pure faith. Real studies can be criticized without relying on that trap.
No. They were pointing out it's possible that you prefer dark mode, even though it may not have the benefits you believe it does. Your preference may be more about aesthetic taste than a physiological response - and that's okay.
I'm gonna lean in to your side. I've noticed ever since switching to a dark theme in my code editor that at the end of the day my eyes feel less tired. BUT (and big one) on the glossy screen of my phone, dark mode feels more straining to the eyes... How can this be so?
My notebook has a matte screen and barely reflects ambient light(s) back at me. I say barely to avoid saying "none" because surely someone will nitpick that it is reflecting a small amount of light etc.
The phone has a glossy screen, and it reflects every single thing it can back my eyes. Dark mode makes it even more "mirror like". And while I prefer the colours (specially if you're using the phone at night, with no ambient lights to bother), I acknowledge that it is more straining during most of the day. Even at night when it autoswitches to dark mode, I'll have some ambient illumination unless I'm at the cinema (not for a couple of months since lockdown) or basically trying to sleep (and I know I shouldn't be checking the phone if I'm trying to sleep).
Another data point: reading PDFs of books and conference papers on my computer (black on white) is tiresome, whereas reading the same on a kindle feels amazing. But then again, the kindles have won this battle a long time ago and nobody should be trying to read books or other media made for plant-based-paper on a screen anyway (and here I give e-ink a bit of leeway and consider it more plant-paper-like than a screen).
I use the pc mostly for music making and video/ photo edit, when i do so i like to work in an almost completely dark rook just some indirect lights, all the software i use has dark grey backgrounds by default, if i need to check something quickly on the internet the browser opens with a blank page (then it switches to dark or theme), that feels in my eyes like being in the nuclear test field.
The hidden assumption you make is discussed as the Preference Satisfaction Thesis in the philosophy of welfare economics, it's the idea that people (subjectively) prefer what is best for them. Almost everybody agrees that the thesis is generally speaking false, although some people would argue that you should accept the preference satisfaction thesis as a rule of thumb if you are an ethical anti-paternalists.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, you could be like the smoker who prefers to have another cigarette even though it's bad for him. Not only that, it's even possible to find examples of people being wrong about their own subjective experiences. For example, people sometimes have cyclic personal preferences and one of the arguments against them is that their subjective feelings are wrong.
> The hidden assumption you make is discussed as the Preference Satisfaction Thesis in the philosophy of welfare economics, it's the idea that people (subjectively) prefer what is best for them.
The hidden assumption in that framing is that there's an objective measure of "what is best for them" which somehow isn't based on what people subjectively prefer.
Is it? I mean, serious question - aren't they they same thing? What IS our subjective experience if not our conscious estimation of how we experienced the thing? Is it possible to think you're enjoying something when really you're not, and if so then what the heck does that even mean?
You can enjoy what you want. The article we are discussing has measurable claims:
1. Easier to read
2. Eye Strain
3. Battery savings
Your subjective "studies" about that are irrelevant if you put them in contrast to proper scientific studies for those things - if you don't measure them properly. And that's not how you feel about it. That's what I was saying.
And it does not matter for that whether you like dark or bright mode, whether you follow the article or speak against it :) That might be part of the confusion.
I have pretty bad eye floaters, and they're more visible in bright light. Having crud bouncing around my entire field of vision does not make for an easy or strain-free reading experience, so I enable dark mode whenever it's an option. I found checking Zulip at work pretty unpleasant until I realized I could enable dark mode.
If you're running a scientific study and basing your conclusions on the average of all participants, you might not pick up on things like that. And if you're running a scientific study on people with normal vision, a sufficiently strict definition of "normal vision" guarantees that you won't pick up on that, although the studies in question probably didn't use so strict a definition.
Even if dark mode is "scientifically worse" for most people, whatever that means, it's a useful accommodation. In fact, the Nielsen Norman Group article that this post links to argue against dark mode recommends dark mode as an accommodation for people with vision impairments.
Yes, I'm aware. A school friend of mine was almost blind and he enabled the Windows white on black accessibility setting to make using the PC easier. I'm not arguing against that.
Although we're far from figuring out the mind in general, much less specifically to certain individuals, there's growing evidence that minds are a collective of sub-units which vie for conscious attention but are nonetheless active in subconscious even if "you" don't know it.
As an example, one part of your mind could be extremely conditioned to want to please and be with someone who is (objectively) abusing you and so you think you're having a good time when they do show you attention, while another part of your mind hates them for hurting you. There are countless examples of how different parts of a single mind can be at odds with each other, and depending on when you think deeply about an experience, can both have enjoyed and not enjoyed an experience.
It's not unreasonable to think that similar mechanics are at play with more subtle, less social-based mechanics. Food (and drugs) have a lot of this going on too.
Well, eating at a restaurant with my wife, I said "This is really good!"
She looked askance, said "Well, its a little salty".
"Yeah, I guess it is."
"And not really very hot"
"Oh, yeah. Hm."
"And there no spice in it. Kinda plain."
"Dang, you're right"
So was I enjoying it? Or the experience of being out with the wife and not having to cook? Or just hungry and anything would do? And I'd mis-attributed what I was enjoying. Clearly my 'subjective experience' was not very, well, objective.
Not saying you didn't change your assessment after new sensory input (which is fine), but did you truly, honestly, change how much you were enjoying the /exact same physical sensations/ based on how much your partner thought you should be enjoying them?
Were you actually happier after you changed your mind that the food wasn't as good? I'm struggling to see this as evidence that your experience improved based on that conversation.
To me that sounds like an orthogonal statement from the article. The article is talking about objective performance and efficiency of the two and you're talking about how they make you feel.
Feeling efficient and being efficient are both valid bases for choosing, but the point of the article is that they don't have high correlation.
You can be wrong about your perceptions, if you’ve read your Descartes.
Dark mode could be more aesthetically pleasing, and yet could also be less legible. I have personally experienced this. Dark mode is hard to read and find my place in compared to light mode. The white space helps me absorb the information and use it effectively. I say this while I still think dark mode looks better for many apps. I just choose light mode because of utility and usability.
I've never had issues with legibility in dark mode but then I apparently have very large pupils (to the point where when I got contact lenses the optician warned me about lens flares / halos) so maybe I don't get some of the benefits of day mode.
What IS our subjective experience if not our conscious estimation of how we experienced the thing?
regardless of the sample population, the difference is asking about perception vs. designing an experiment that provides consistent measures and accounts for bias. That's the definition of science. What you're arguing is "I know what I know", i.e. faith.
Why not conduct your own experiment, using Science?
1. Start with a hypothesis, that "dark mode is less comfortable for me than light mode".
2. Design an experiment: find the sites that you use most. Use them for 10 minutes each in light mode and dark mode. Write down your impressions.
3. Build a conclusion: was your hypothesis correct? Was it partially correct for some sites?
Then you can adapt your behaviour according to your new, Scientifically-proven knowledge.
Science isn't faith-based, but there are a ton of problems with Academia and the way Science is practised and published at the moment. Science is also not connected with Academia - the scientific method doesn't need a university grant to work. You can literally conduct your own experiment in a couple of hours (as above) to get better information than any study. Not publishing it doesn't make it any less scientific.
It makes no sense to me to trust an unknown number of studies over my personal experience. I prefer dark mode. I'll stick with that. You do you.
Unfortunately your proposed study design does not control for biases. For example, say I'm an audiophile comparing two audio formats, x and y, and I hear y is remarkably better. If I compare them side by side, my own brain might fool me that y is better. The way to control that is to do a blind test, where I won't know which one is x or y.
Also, asking people their impressions can be helpful in the human aspect of the research, but quantitatively you need some sort of metric you can evaluate their experience on. For example, you'd assign a task and see how well people did comparing the two modes, while also making sure the difference is statistically significant (meaning it wasn't just as likely to be chance).
This is just the beginning of where good study design starts. You'd also do things like assigning the modes themselves randomly, so to go back to the audiophile example, I might notice if it's always x and then y, but not if it's scrambled. You'd could go further and try to stratify the groups, so for example making sure one group isn't all elderly people and the other young. It goes on and on...
So while the scientific method is nice, especially for introducing science in educational contexts, the methodology and rationale behind research is much more deliberate and involved. By all means they can try out things themselves, but no, they will not "get better information than any study".
But that's the point. I don't care about anyone else's preferences. I'm not trying to find the best option out of the two for anyone else but me. My biases are the thing I'm trying to measure here :)
In my experience, that kind of design would be bad. I prefer light themes, but whenever I've used some app in dark mode and switch to a light one, the experience is inevitably jarring, and completely faithful to all the sun-burns-my-eyes jokes made about light themes. But it's fine the next day.
One of the more important parts of the studies referenced in the NNGroup article the blog post in the OP is referring to is that they did experiments between people rather than subjecting people to different conditions consecutively. When the initial light-dark contrast isn't present, people's fatigue ratings were about equal for both modes.
Moreover, people perceived both modes equally hard to read, but were actually more efficient in reading lightmode text.
That advantage is driven largely by the sheer amount of light - some researchers did an experiment where they cranked up the brightness on a dark theme so the experienced brightness was the same and it was just as readable as a light theme. But then you're using a crapton of electricity since you're turning dark-hued pixels to be super bright.
>It makes no sense to me to trust an unknown number of studies over my personal experience
Your personal experience is incapable of judging your performance in visual-acuity tasks and proofreading tasks, or determining the level of eyestrain caused when using light or dark mode.
Meanwhile, the scientists aren't trying to change your mind over which one is "more comfortable." They are trying to determine why you find something more comfortable and how well your the various options perform.
While this commentator invested far less effort than the scientists in reaching his result about dark mode, he also has no benefits from you choosing to believe him or not. You are in fact choosing to see the brand "science" as something transcendental that doesn't concern any incentive structures, which if false and opens you to lots of manipulation.
I am just wondering does the author alao distrust science when it comes to medical treatments and the law of gravity, or does is his distrust highly selective.
Maths has proofs. Logical reasoning from first arguments that a thing is true or not. It either is, or is not, proven. End of.
Physics as applied maths, pretty solid. We need to conduct experiments to verify that nature agrees with our mathematical constructs, but on the whole these are simple and unequivocal. e.g . gravity. Particle physics gets dodgy because of the vast range of collision results - statistics starts creeping in. Rather than being able to say that particle A collides with particle B to produce particles D an E, we now have a statistical chance that somethng might happen.
Chemistry as applied physics, again, pretty solid. Everything has to be tested by experiment, and experiment frequently throws up surprises, but if a reacts with B in Chicago, it probably does in Moscow too.
Biology as applied chemistry. Mostly solid. It gets massively complex, and so the temptation to resort to statistics is overwhelming and most biological papers start talking about statistical probabilities rather than actual results. But the basic biology is mostly the same for most subjects, and if the conclusion is simple (virology and the effectiveness of vaccines, for example) then we're all good.
Any social science as applied biology: not much. This is really dodgy territory where the experiment design totally dominates the result, and the result is statistical data that has to be massaged into a definitive statement. This is p-hacking territory, where experiments are largely unreproducible, very subject to bias, cultural references, and academia politics. E.g. whether creativity shares a limited resource pool with willpower - highly subjective, highly variable between individuals, hihgly suspect if your paper cites this as a proven result.
Not all science is worthy of the same level of trust. The scientific method is trustworthy. Academia is not.
The subject in question is not some fuzzy social science: this is a straightforward assessment of reading ability for a given color scheme. You access objective metrics like ability to detect errors, reading speed, accuracy, etc.
Arguing with this is like disputing the fact that high heels make for terrible running shoes. Research in question with be quite similar.
> If you doubt about the rigor of some study, by all means point the errors you find.
Sampling. It probably feels good hand-waving away the problem of "does this study apply to everyone?" by introducing the "representative sample" construct, but it has its problems and I doubt they will be ever solved. You can't speak for everyone when you have several thousands samples -- out of ~8 billion people.
This is kind of akin to that artificially absurd example of "on average, every human on Earth has one testicle". (And don't get nitpicky here, please; it might be "median" or another term, and that's not the point.)
What your parent poster says is that this article is kind of hiding behind science to be able to claim a generalisation it makes is true. Which it still isn't. Most people I asked said they prefer dark mode. Some said they like light mode. This article changes none of that.
> This is kind of akin to that artificially absurd example of "on average, every human on Earth has one testicle".
No. If I claim everyone has 0.5 testicles, that's bad science. If I randomly choose a large enough number of subjects and report that approximately 50% have two testicles and approximately 50% have no testicles, with error bars, p-values, etc., saying that you don't trust this because I am trying to make a career and you prefer to follow your own experience, which after looking between your legs clearly shows that 100% of people have two testicles, would be quite stupid. If I chose only 3 people, or all of them are male or female, or I make any other mistake, point the mistake, but don't attack me personally, and much less science in general.
For example, I followed the link to the study by the Nielsen Norman Group and then the reference to the study of Piepenbrock. They explain well their sampling method, with different groups by age and depending on vision problems. You can clearly see the individual results and the variance, and it is obvious that generalizing to the 100% of population would be wrong, but there are some very clear trends. Calling these researchers "someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career" without any proof whatsoever is insulting.
To be clear, I do not intend that anyone changes habits because of these studies. I agree that this is subjective enough to make it a personal decision. But as a scientist trying to make a career, I found the above comment very disrespectful.
I apologise then. I didn't mean to insult scientists. I was more trying to point out the difference between The Scientific Method and Academic Practice.
Especially in the social sciences, there's been a whole discussion recently about how our current system of evaluating and rewarding scientists is not benefitting Science. There's even been high-profile commentators disputing whether the social sciences are actually Science at all.
As you're a scientist I won't bother explaining this to you. I'm sure you're aware of the problems here.
So my point is that for a study like this, there's lots of room for playing statistical games in order to achieve a more "sensational" result that is more publishable and more likely to get cited. We know this happens and we know this is especially rife in this area of study. So I have become much more sceptical of social-science studies showing broad generalised results about a subject applying to the whole human race. Especially if those studies contravene some commonly-held view about the subject. My default position has moved from "well, they know what they're doing so there must be something to it", to "I'm going to assume that they p-hacked their way to a sensational result until I have evidence to prove otherwise".
I might be wrong in taking that stance. I will change it if I have better evidence.
Fair enough, and apologies accepted. I agree that many social studies lack rigor. And, unfortunately, it also happens quite a lot with more technical topics in which it is much easier to be objective.
I get easily triggered when science is presented as a matter of faith, but in fact I totally agree with your skeptical point of view.
That it's conducted on humans (a.k.a. very small sample, not generalizable, non-objective metrics, hard to remove observer bias etc.)? I think regardless of personal opinion, just based on a Bayesian / base rate mental model, you should default to disbelieving any published social studies (I refuse to call it "science") that haven't been rigorously replicated.
> If you doubt about the rigor of some study, by all means point the errors you find. In the meantime, I will trust those scientific studies more than subjective opinions in hackernews comments.
Maybe, but most published studies are close to pure garbage and even in clinical trials which is supposed to be the holy grail of Science there's cherry picking, improper design, and lack of repeatability across the board.
"Science" is only as good as the humans conducting it. Unfortunately us humans are pretty bad at doing Science.
Well, arguably science is just the superior faith-based system. Nothing is ever proven, but it contains a method to constantly find the theory most likely to deserve your faith.
That's my problem with science (and I am an atheist who is 100% for the scientific method and even have a PhD):
The "real" science has no absolutes. But the problem is that it is very difficult for humans to operationalize it that way. Take for example eggs and cholesterol. I remember in the late 80s, my father (also a scientist/biologist) stopped eating eggs because apparently Science said eggs are bad for you (due to some papers)... later in the mid/late 90s Science said that eggs are actually not bad, but good for you (because, even if they where high on cholesterol, it was the good cholesterol).
So, for people (even other scientists!) that are not experts in the subject, it becomes a matter of belief... believe in the papers some random team published, because it was published in Nature.
> Nothing is ever proven, but it contains a method to constantly find the theory most likely to deserve your faith.
Science is faith based for the non-scientific. As you put it yourself, it is about trusting studies and the institutions that produced it (including whatever in them creates the incentives for p-hacking).
No scientist expects anyone to trust studies or the institutions producing them. So, that's wrong from the beginning. The expectation of refuting something is just a bit higher than "I don't believe it!", e.g. read the study and show flaws in it - or make a counter study which shows different results. Maybe combine both.
Comparing this to faith where from the start you cannot check anything doesn't make any sense (if you know that something is true or false it isn't faith anymore, that's the point).
That's not really true. Scientists do (and expect others to) respect "established" and "trusted" journals that group studies together in some kind of authentication process. Even open journals like Sci-Hub are like this.
Otherwise, you could believe any PDF you can find on Google and know it to be true and representative. What if someone wrote a net to generate 10,000,000 studies on the same set of topics and scattered them throughout the Internet? Given a random study, you wouldn't know whether it's real or generated, without the "authority" aspect of a journal.
Now, whether or not the journals actually do a good job at authenticating the studies is another question. But, the principle stands that they are what we trust as consumers of science (a role which scientific researchers themselves play as well).
I agree with what you're saying. However, I think the parent's point is that people without education or a good understanding of the scientific process feel like they are accepting it (or not) based on faith.
I think this total lack of understanding of how the scientific process works is one of the biggest problems facing America today.
False. If you did not do the study/experiment yourself, you are putting your faith in scientists that did. This is philosophically equivalent to someone putting their faith in, say a monk, or a pastor.
If you go one level deeper, the monk might say, 'do X penance for Y years to verify Z claim', then it's up to you whether you want to follow that route or not. Until then, his claim is not unfalsifiable, like many skeptics claim.
Even for mundane day-to-day claims, 'science', as commonly understood, falls short.
e.g. Science cannot prove to me that a mango tastes sweet, without putting the condition that I must taste it. The only 'proof' it can provide is 'Taste it and see for yourself'. If I say, 'I will only taste it AFTER you prove it is sweet', then nothing will happen. Because Taste is subjective. Yet, everyone, 'miraculously' is able to come to a consensus.
There are truths that are individually/subjectively verifiable, but collectively/objectively unverifiable.
The denigration of the former type of truths is something armchair scientists must avoid. Real scientists never denigrate them.
>Science is not a faith based system
Some disciplines certainly are, you only need to look at the current rigamaroo around COVID and climate change models. Some 'models' saying millions of deaths before being re-engineered a few weeks later to be mere thousands, or predicting huge swaths of the Earth being uninhabitable by now, etc. You can also look into climate models that predicted perilous cooling on a global scale from decades past.
These sorts of model, which are presented as capital S Science, are at best guesstimates, that don't receive nearly the amount of popular coverage when they shown to be wrong in the fullness of time (or indeed need to be reinforced by changing data). If a model is no better than a coin toss that's faith based to me.
A recent example; WHO "walks backs" statement made a day before about data showing that asymptomatic carriers infecting others is very rare. At the same time saying between 6% and 41% of the population may be asymptomatic with a 16% error margin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im0G7jb78jc
I also cringed at the "I don't trust science" vibe, but I also don't feel like someone should have to be an expert in statistics AND eyestrain measurement AND visible spectrum of light in order to credibly disagree with the results of a study. IOW, we shouldn't be able to reject someone's disagreement merely because they're not credentialed enough; that would lead to a tyranny of supposed expertise.
I should have made it clear. I trust the scientific method. I don't trust that that method is being rigorously applied by social scientists seeking tenure.
You are overstating the results of such studies or use your datapoint out of context. Just because A is on average better than B, does not mean that A is better for everyone.
If you have a study that shows that most people do(n't) like pineapple on pizza (maybe make a blog post "is pineapple on pizza such a good idea?"), that is rather unrelated to someone likeing pineapple on pizza or not and is not claiming that all people don't like pineapple on pizza.
Darkmode is a nice thing! It feels like some people hype it as the 'one true better solution to everything' or a strictly superior version, when it boils down to preferance and minor differences. In the end you probably want to have both options (if you have the capacity to support them).
- Better rendering of hues. This comes in nice for things like syntax coloring, or photo editing. The eye is evaluating a color next to the absence of light, instead of next to washed out light.
- Less eye strain when ambient light is insufficient. Ideally the brightness of the screen should be within the same range of brighness as the surroundings.
In my home office, I have about 20,000 lumens of light shining in a relatively small space, at a temperature of 5000K. In other words, it's a sunny day in my office regardless of the weather or the time of day. A quick and easy way to figure out if you have enough light (or too much) is to step back and point your cell phone camera at your workspace. Take a photo without HDR mode. Can you make out details of what's on your screen AND its surroundings? For most people, the screen will be washed out because the ambient light is way underpowered. Dark mode is a good response to that situation.
With quality and variable lighting, you can have the best setup: use light mode during the day; switch to dark mode when it suits you, whether it be for a task that works better in that mode or for evening time when you prefer to start sending a signal of sleepiness to your body.
As someone who uses both dark mode and light mode, a major factor is if I'm in a darker area. When I read books on my phone, I prefer dark mode at night and light mode during the day.
To what extent are these studies testing these sub-optimal reading conditions? Are they just testing optimal conditions which could have different results?
Any comments on optimal lighting for a home office? Or, as your setup is?
A nice bright working area sounds nice. Bonus if it's good light, and not something that will feel unnatural.
Sidenote: I've got a nice big window that I face, and I often want it open, but my room is so dark I have to keep it mostly closed as it overpowers my monitor, eyes, etc.
I have several compact fluorescent bulbs each outputting 8,600 lumen. Since the bulbs measure about 10" long, the only fixture I found to work is suspend a bare socket and attach a giant paper lantern.
When selecting light, I pay attention to the temperature of the light (I like 5000K for daylight) and the Color Rendering Index (CRI) which is a measure of the quality of light. Technically you can make "white" with only 3 wavelengths, however the broader the spectrum of light (many wavelengths), the better it shows on reflected surfaces. It's not highly relevant to the topic of eye strain with screens but it's a nice touch that makes the area more comfortable.
Recently, I started exploring LED lights and there are some really good options appearing on the market. I tested some spot lights with a CRI of 92 which look even better than halogens. So when it comes time for me to replace my CFLs, I might end up with a better option.
My home office is the only place I really feel the benefit of Philips Hue bulbs. Being able to fine-tune and change the white color temperature throughout the day (and night) is fantastic.
Personally, I prefer indirect light. So I have light strips which illuminate the wall behind my monitor , and a few other bulbs directed at the ceiling which reflect light back down.
I think you have multiple misunderstandings about how science provides valuable results. The first thing I want to say is that I don't devalue your personal experience.
I am unaware of any fighter jet seat problem. If you use the average, you're actually pretty likely (depending on the shape of the distribution, which in the case of phenotypes like body size, are normally distributed when broken down by gender) to find the size that accomodates the most people (you could also consider using the median, or the most populated class, or add a few adjustable parts).
Science hasn't reached the point where it can create truly personalized models that account for your genetics, personal feelings, and other details about your setup. It would be nice if we had that kind of ability, but the data isn't there (either the quality or quantity of the data). however, it's generally understood that these sorts of studies provide useful evidence for people who are making policy for large numbers of people.
Also, what you did at home wasn't an experiment (did you use positive and negative controls and blinding), it was just a measurement of your personal preferences. Again, not trying to deny your personal experience, but a good scientific study does trump your actual experience, when applied to the population at large.
The article you cited is an interesting just-so explanation but it's mostly narrative, not really correct. It's based on this book https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062358363/the-end-of-averag... which espouses some rather non-quantitative concepts (it seems like the author had a hobbyhorse and they rode it as far as they could).
I don't know that it's "pretty famous", as I find only a few references to it (the book I mentioned, the article you mentioned, and a few other references).
I worked in biology for a long time and work with ML datasets that make money based on statistical analysis of people properties and the idea that "no one is average" is technically correct and also completely missing the point of scientific analysis (I definitely acknowledge that science doesn't do a good job with personalization).
My father was an instrumentation engineer for the DoD and much of what he worked on during his time at the high speed test track out at WSMR did involve ejection seat testing.
They had an assortment of very expensive mannequins rigged up with a multitude of sensors to determine strain or torsional effects that were used to determine whether the ejection was "survivable." I believe the certification process included the smallest possible dummy that could survive the seat ejection, and the largest that would fit.
Too small and the seat couldn't be rigged with enough ballast to prevent the acceleration of the ejection motor from crushing the pilot's spine. Too large and the seat wouldn't clear the tail or other aircraft structures. If I understand it correctly, the seats are configured to the pilot for this reason.
It's absolutely true that designing around averages is not how ejection seats are constructed or, for that matter, tested.
I strongly urge you to become familiar with the fighter-jet-seat problem if you're working with humans and applying averages.
"no-one is average" is more than technically correct. If your scientific analysis is missing this key point about humans, then it's basically worthless because it doesn't apply to real humans. This is what the US Air Force found: you have to personalise. You can never apply a generic result to an individual and have a good outcome.
If 60% people perform better with light theme and 40% dark theme, average is going to be that light theme is superior. This doesn't make dark mode a bad idea.
This is going to appear nitpicky, but the average preference is some average gray, neither dark nor light. The mode is light. That relates back to the fighter jet thing: if you’re going to build a non-adjustable cockpit, build one that fits (within some tolerance) the most number of pilots, not the average on every dimension.
> Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment?
Of course. All you are measuring is how comfortable you feel, which is irrelevant. What they are measuring is how well people actually perform on tasks while using dark mode. Just because dark mode feels better to you doesn't imply anything about the latter question.
Seeing as we're talking about something that relates to eyestrain, I don't think we can discount how the GP feels.
If you don't feel well you likely aren't going to perform well. If your eyes hurt, you are going to want to stop working. If I had to stare at a bright white screen all day, I wouldn't get the task done because it hurts my eyes. Common sense.
Yet another study where it's trying to trump opinion with a study. You can't be wrong if you prefer dark mode/light mode, it's subjective. A study is going to have a real hard time proving one is "better" than the other and we certainly shouldn't take the results on faith.
Even if dark mode "feels" better that still doesn't imply it actually causes less eye strain. Without data it's possible OP's choice could be driven just by aesthetic preferences and they don't realize it.
I don't see in the study linked in the article where it attributes light mode to more eye strain.
I found where blue light causes eye strain, and it most certainly does, I immediately notice the difference when using a blue light filter on my monitor, but you can have both dark mode and a blue light filter enabled.
You measured the dryness/redness of your/your partner's eyes after trying dark and light mode? Or is it just that occasionally you or your partner get dry/red eyes and the most memorable association was using light mode beforehand (and it's memorable because you don't like the aesthetics of it)?
I don't think this is "rocket science" but that doesn't mean it is handwavingly obvious either
As much as, probably more than, aesthetic preferences, I would posit that there are many environmental differences which are difficult to completely control for. Screen type and configuration, ambient light level, light source positioning, how often the user look away from the screen (completely away from work, or just onto other media to read from a page for instance), etc.
Having said that I think my preferences are mainly, if not entirely, aesthetic. Dark-on-light terminals feel weird as do light-on-dark documents/spreadsheets - that can't be anything other than just what I'm used to.
The parent's point being that feeling productive has roughly no correlation with being productive. You can feel very productive with that https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/ game that was recently linked here; but that doesn't mean that you are more productive, and in fact you will be much less-so, because the "work" in the game is meaningless.
Ah yes because these scientific studies using light vs dark mode were able to precisely capture “productivity” output which totally translates to the work that SWE do.
Who said anything about the scientific studies proving anything? My point was that feelings prove just as little. If you're not going to trust other people, then especially don't trust yourself. The output of your feelings is even less evidence-based than the worst possible scientific study.
If you want to truly understand how you specifically react to something, then do science yourself. You don't need to be very rigorous with this, as the goal isn't to prove some huge effect size. The goal is to just get an objective answer to the question of whether you are more productive, rather than a subjective (and therefore very likely wrong) one. Find an objective measure of your own personal performance (anything you care about, doesn't have to be something a boss would care about); maybe find a way to blind yourself to which days you're using the treatment vs. a placebo; write down numbers; and then stick 'em in Excel and see what you get.
I would point at Gwern as a good example of someone who runs self-experiments to determine the objective n=1 effects of different "life hacks" on things they care about. (For Gwern, this is usually brain performance—measured by, among other things, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back task, data for which can be collected in the form of "playing" a quick round of a computer game.) For example, here's their look into magnesium supplementation: https://www.gwern.net/nootropics/Magnesium
I am sure if I am whipped or faced with a shock collar I could also be measurably 'productive'. It's pretty evident the reasons why feelings trump productivity then.
I value my feelings in a pleasant work environment a hell of a lot more than productivity metrics.
This article is talking about a subjective experience.
The earth is a slightly flattened sphere regardless of what you or I choose to believe.
Dark mode is more productive for me in my experience. And showing me concrete proof that other people are more productive in light mode is not going to change that. It's still going to be more productive for me regardless of how many other people find it less productive.
I think this is the core of why we have such out-there beliefs at the moment: everyone believes they live in their own reality, and their subjective opinions trump objective reality. Partly, I think this is due to social sciences attempting to make objective reality out of statistical analysis of subjective opinions. A million people believing the earth is flat doesn't make it so, yet that's exactly what social science says.
Dark mode is a matter of demand, not if it's good for you. The real questions scientists should be asking why people want it in the first place. Other than that, I agree with your sentiment.
People wanted dark modes of websites since the dawn of the web itself. It's just that it was too inconvenient for companies to maintain at least two designs at the same time so they happily turned a blind eye to the requests.
>Many people perceive light mode as the cause of eye strain. But blue light, among other things, is actually the cause of it most of the time. This is covered in more detail by Vice, where they say:
>>A 2018 study published in BMJ Open Ophthalmology notes that blue light could be a factor in eye tiredness, but cites dry eyes from not blinking for long periods as a more serious cause of eye strain, as well as too-small fonts, and conditions like uncorrected astigmatism.
It may be that when you use dark mode, because of the lack of blue light you feel better. But perhaps you can test this by installing something like [Flux](https://justgetflux.com/) to see if that also helps.
It's quite absurd how the discussion around this post seems to have turned into a fight on dogmatism. I guess many presumed "scientists" are just quite hurt by the blunt statement "I don't have that much faith in scientists", no matter how valid your points might be.
If one can't even express doubt about some academic papers (note how different it is to expressing doubt on the whole idea of "science"), which exist in the millions, then things are pretty messed up. A lot of commenters are either incapable of some basic reading comprehension or are deliberately misinterpreting it.
> Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment?
This is how I always feel about design/UI/UX/etc research: They remove functionality and make things more clumsy and then claim it's Good For Me. They unironically cite to design "fundamentals" without consideration for culture or even personal preference [0] as if any such things could exist. Is it any coincidence the most designed websites are a narrow strip of gray-on-gray text lost in a site which won't even load without heavyweight JS?
Suppose your mechanic mess up your car. Suppose this happen again with a second mechanic, and maybe even a third. Is that enough to justify the conclusion that “mechanics are bad”? I don’t think so. Science is the same.
> Is that enough to justify the conclusion that “mechanics are bad”?
Maybe not, but it's certainly enough to justify the conclusion that "mechanics should not be blindly trusted". Same with scientists. Doing good science is hard, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if most studies are flawed.
Also, there's a reason the concept of independent verification is so important in science. Even if the scientists doing a study are trying their best to do good science, it's incredibly easy to make a mistake. A healthy dose of skepticism is very much warranted.
Perhaps, but that's not a very high bar. If you personally experience something that disagrees with what a research paper says, I don't think it's reasonable to just assume you must have been mistaken.
That doesn't mean I think you should believe your senses either. It means it's worth looking into it further (if you care, at least).
About that, it's surprising that there's so much papercuts in the scientific field these days. p-hacking, lack of peer reviews, journal gatekeeping, also some ex-engineer turned pseudo cosmologist [0] said that there's too much technological 'papers' and not enough fundamentals, which dillute the quality of thinking and the seal of quality attached to the scientific method
(the man is a controversial figure, most people would consider him a nutsack, but I can agree with the fact that research has shifted in meaning compared to early 20th century)
Skimming the website and referenced paper-website (didn’t make it to a particular paper) I saw only statements of results, and none of methodology. Is the p-hacking claim “a general feeling” or can you pull it from something concrete here?
By the way, in case it is “just” a feeling, I’ll say up front I share the feeling too. I think worth considering for every empirical study.
Humans as a rule tend to do multiple things thinking that what they’re doing is the best for them and then turns out it’s not.
Although for me it’s a ridiculous thing to even bother trying to measure. The problem isn’t whether it’s slightly better to look at a dark or light background but rather that we spend so much time staring at screens that it becomes a problem.
I can't handle dark mode. If letters are bright they burn into my eyes and follow my gaze. I use black on solarized background color for years after I dropped the white on black and it feels much better.
I think I can throw some light on this one. (Sorry, no references. I read about this, but can’tremember where.) Some time years ago, the US air force tried to find out, using statistics, how to design cockpits to fit most pilots. So they did multiple measurements on many people; upper and lower arm lengths, ditto for legs, back lengths, etc. Then they took the average of each measurement and designed cockpits to fit pilots of average size, allowing for some variation, of course. As it turned out, almost every pilot was much more than a standard deviation from the mean in some dimension, so these cockpits actually fit practically no one – resulting in a too high rate of (near) accidents. I am not sure how they overcame the problem, but IIRC, part of the solution involved designing for the exact measurements not being quite so critical.
While I believe you, you may also see how your argument is similar to the argument "non-proven pseudoscience medical treatments cured my disease, therefore they work".
I would be very interested in a study that looks at how much of the dark/light color scheme preference is just due to habit and esthetics.
"reading white text from a black screen or tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white background may stimulate myopia"
No. No it doesn't.
1. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career is not going to produce good advice for me.
2. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyeballs. They're grading experiences on a bell curve and taking the median. We all experience things differently. This is the "fighter jet seat problem" - if you use the average then it fits no-one.
3. Even if I had average eyeballs (and I probably do), I doubt my situation is anything like the test subjects in the experiments. My home office isn't set up that well (I'm working on it).
4. My research, conducted using my eyeballs in my home office on my equipment, shows I prefer dark mode. I have tried both, and dark mode was the more comfortable experience. My experiment beats "multiple studies" for my situation. Yours may be different.