Now it may sound a little awful especially if you are a graphics designer, but the so called soothing vanilla colored web 2.0 designs, have caused me a hell of a pain. I generally browse the web using red hat linux with a firefox browser on a monitor whose brightness is not more than 40%, that was not long after I realized that I was fast depreciating my sight. I sit at least half a meter away from the monitor now and have increased the font size to more than medium, but I still cant say that Im totally comfortable during my browsing hours which last from at least 10 hours a day to 14 hours at times, with single sittings on at least a couple of hours. I may be missing the aim by a mile, but I do think that this is largely due to the web 2.0 sites I visit so often. It is ironical that Web 2.0 designs are generally meant to be user friendly and comfortable but some of the wordpress themes and some other sites have colors that cause a lot of strain to my eyes. Im no expert in this field but take a look at some of the graphics below and tell me if your comfortable looking at them for a long time.
or see these sites
http://www.studio7designs.com/
http://www.vimeo.com/
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.bloglines.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
I did a little research on how to keep my eyes healthy in my sockets and this is what I found, courtesy, ergoindemand, a company that does research to improve computer anti-glares.
According to them,
Test your work station and make sure the following recommendations are in place:
-
There are no screen reflections from overhead or desk task lights.
-
The work place is well lightened in order to read hardcopies without
straining your eyes. -
All windows are at right angles to the screen and not behind or in
front of the screen. Lighting is not overly bright. -
If you type from a hard copy into the computer, make sure it is
located at about the same distance from your eyes as the screen
itself. -
The middle of the computer screen is about 20 degrees below your
eye level, or at a comfortable depth that doesn't require your head to turn or tilt. -
Use a monitor with brightness controls and adjust them to a comfortable setting.
-
Optimize your screen view with one of our quality anti glare computer filters.
-
Pay particular attention to symptoms or difficulties children may be experiencing (including rubbing their eyes, tearing, irritated reddened eyes, among other symptoms) they may not mention.
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Check with a vision professional if symptoms of discomfort or computer vision syndrome occur.
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Take plenty of breaks so your eyes can rest and focus on more distant objects than a computer screen. (For information on eye breaks, check desk exercises.)
It is also a known fact that some colors cause more strain to eyes than others. May be the contrast of the screen in general also makes a difference, but what I know for sure is, for a guy like me who spends on an average 75 hours on the web browsing, it is very important that these evolving web 2.0 sites make it a essential to design stuff that makes for easy readability and min strain. Also I am in no way criticizing any site or graphic, I am merely trying to make a point that I feel affects me and my friends.
5 Bahs !:
Looking at a computer screen for 14 hours a day is what's fatiguing your eyes. Not Web 2.0. It's also making you a little bit paranoid.
Well.. it is a known fact that heavy color contrasts cause stress to eyes.
That's a really helpful comment, Anonymous. Some of us have to use a computer screen for that amount of time. It's called work. We're not all leaving cowardly anonymous comments.
Are you suggesting that there aren't poorly designed web sites, and that it's all down to paranoia on the part of the viewer?
@andy merrett: completely agree with you. with the number of hours we spend in front of the screen on the ise, its important to pay some heed to designs and hci .
Even I agree with the web 2.0 colour schemes, they are irritating sometimes.
However, even I spend more than 14 hours a day on computer NOT doing any specific work. (or the work part constitutes only about 20% of the browsing time). So for people like me (did I suggest workless people like me ;-), anonymus's comment is somewhat suited.
Ofcourse there are options like changing the screen settings (brightness etc.) or using those anti-something screens.
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