It feels bad to “dumb down” a super cool design.

Bumping up that contrast ratio in colors, making font sizes just a bit bigger, making headlines literally impossible to miss… nobody wants to make an edgy site dull. And yet, it’s all in the name of accommodating real-life visitors who simply need a more “middle ground” experience to understand it.

Without diving into the depths of accessibility or the effects of specific design in user experience… here are a few things I’ve noticed lately on sites that really ping the “not-very-consumable-o-meter”:

• Designing at high brightness — if your super cool dark mode design depends on users having a 1000+ nit display at max-brightness to be able to tell shades of black apart, you’re doing something wrong.
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• Making the majority of text way too small — I get it… having tons of little segments of text that frame the page is cool. But if you find yourself leaning closer to read, chances are, visitors will have to whip out the ol’ magnifying glass to read anything. Think: "What would grandma say?"
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• Everything on the screen moves — every bit of content fades and moves and sparkles into place while the user just tries to comprehend what’s going on. It’s visual whiplash! It truly feels like many developers spend more time on the animations than the actual design of a site.

By all means, make cool websites that inspire and wow visitors... just remember that the majority of people (read: the visitors you want on your site!) need the simplest possible experience to have a shot at connecting meaningfully. Make rad things, then dial back the rad-ness by about 40% and you should be in normie-acceptable territory.

Don’t neglect the “normies”.