Smart Themes

Problem statement

For months now, I’ve become more aware of the painfully bright light that hits my eyes when using certain apps at night.

Thumbs-up to companies designers that create using empathy and User/Human centered design.

Applications like Twitter and more recently YouTube now have dark themes.

These themes present dark backgrounds which, at night, go easy on the eyes... There’s a catch though - more on this later. While a dark theme is better at night, a light/white theme will be more visible in the day time and would be a blessing when using a mobile device outdoors.

About that catch

To access this dark theme, the user usually has to do around 4 or more clicks, and repeat this to switch back.

Empathy, Machine Learning and AI :

This is where the application and the device work together to care for the user. This will reduced fatigue resulting avoidable repetition.

An app switches modes between its light theme and dark theme when it's user's environment changes. I'm not just talking about switching when it turns from day to night and viceversa, it's about using ambient light, proximity and other sensors to understand a change of environment and intelligently transit between modes.

Enter the UI/UX and Product Designers:

The designer is saddled with the responsibility of using already available data, further user research and empathy to create clear and subtle interfaces that provide users with very similar experiences when an app or tool transitions from one theme to the other - wow, that’s a long sentence.

This entails creating design systems that involve two schemes - text colours, background colours, shadows and so on - for every user flow and journey.

Benefits:
There is consern about how light from digital displays contributes to eye problems in humans. This is made worse when the user views their device in a space with low or no light.

With Smart Themes, users are guaranteed subtle, yet heathy viewing on devices.