TL;DR: Opted Out Because Of Eye Strain – and there is a massive accessibility issue with the unchangeable “pure” black background
Note: many drones were harmed in the course of this review
I gave it a sincere try today running a DED 6/10. I had to opt out early for a few reasons, listed in order of importance:
- Eye strain. The contrast, color, or something along those lines physically hurts my eyes. I even changed the theming, which helped only a little. The main culprit are the excessive reliance upon subtle shades of white and grey everywhere in combination with pure black background, which I couldn’t fix with theming nor colorblind mode. The main problem is I have to distinguish them from each other, not the black background, to understand the conveyed information. This strains my eyes severely.
- Brightness. This kind of ties into the “eye strain” but deserves its own mention. Certain panes feel like they are “super bright”, while others overall feel shadowed and in the background. It is inconsistent pane to pane and overall makes it hard for my brain to ignore un-important yet brighter information than more-important but overall dimmer information.
- “Compact Mode”. Sincere feedback: “Compact Mode” should be The Normal Mode, and the “current normal Photon UI” should instead be the alternative mode: the one you have to manually opt-in to pane-by-pane – call it “Puff Mode”. Once I figured out where to find “compact mode”, you bet I enabled it in every pane I could find. The whitespacing is horrendous otherwise.
There are elements to the UI I do really like. I wish I could slog through and try to use it, but I am not willing to physically subject myself to eye strain to get the cooler and seamless UI.
Detailed feedback follows. The last item (E) is the major accessibility issue.
A) The Drone Window
Eye Strain: 
Brightness:
Compact Mode:
This alone is the top offender for me in multiple categories. Count the varying number of greys alone in this screenshot of the inactive window:
Between the title text, “Drones In Bay” text, “Drones In Bay” background, glow around the down arrow, drone name text, HP bar, icons, and the background of the pane it feels like there is indeed about 6 different shades of white, grey, and black.
Those HP bars are easily the brightest thing in the entire UI when you have up Overview, Locations, Local, Fleet, Signatures, Selected Item, Cargo, and Drone windows. It alone is the source of so much eye strain trying to ignore it. I keep it close to my modules because I manage drones like I manage my modules. It lets me win 1v1s that rely on drone micromanagement. I’m not moving the window.
The functionality is also awful, even when compact mode is enabled. For one, I could no longer fit the same information – hint: see if you can find the scrollbar, and count that as yet another eye-straining shade of grey:
I also do not need pictures of my drones to know what they are. The picture, and the vertical spacing that goes with it, needs to go away even in Compact Mode. When you enable compact mode, the pictures still stick around for launched drones, which remains a problem.
There is also weird or buggy behavior where “Drones In Space” seems to be anchored to the bottom of the pane unless “Drones In Bay” is collapsed, then it’s listed right below “Drones In Bay”. Do one, or the other, but don’t have it jump around.
B) Selected Item Window
Eye Strain:
Brightness: 
Compact Mode: 
Quite simply, the icons rely on shades of grey to determine whether an option is enabled or disabled. There are 4 kinds of apparent grey to a human eye:
- The “Selected Item” title
- The text of the selected item
- The icons in “enabled” state
- The icons in “disabled” state
This single fact makes it incredibly arduous on my eyes: The Selected Item title shade of grey is in-between “enabled” and “disabled” state of greys. My eyes strain trying to ignore this middle-shade to reflexively distinguish the others.
As to why compact mode needs to be the default, check this out, I selected an NPC:
Now tell me, what is its bounty? Do you think there’s enough space to display what that bounty is? The answer is “IDK” and “no” because the true answer is that theres a tiny scrollbar to display a hidden second line of text to tell me its bounty is something like 14,000 ISK. Yes, that’s a tiny scrollbar below the “-” sign.
Yes – that “Centus Special Unit - 12km” line of text is 1 of 2, the second line is just hidden below! This entirely goes away with “compact mode”
The picture is also critical. Why is the picture only a part of “compact mode”? Shouldn’t the big-ass picture be a part of “not-compact mode” too?
Are you really going to read the three physical inches of screen space that is the line “True Creation’s Park Overseer Wreck” to determine “yes, that’s a wreck, not what I wanted to shoot” instead of just immediately having a picture convey that information?
You don’t have to go hunting for the last word “wreck” there. The picture in invaluable at conveying information. This is especially important because what you have selected for modules (via targeting reticle) versus what you’ve selected with your mouse (this pane) is at times a source of confusion, especially for newbies.
Compact mode should absolutely be the default if only for the picture.
B.5) General Window Headers
I wanted to briefly mention for inconsistent functionality. Can you tell me which one of these windows is locked in position?
That’s right, both of them are locked in position! The lock icon is inconsistently displayed in the headers of windows. The difference seems arbitrary. For example, the Locations Window doesn’t have the lock icon, but your ship’s cargo window does.
Makes no sense.
C) Probe Window
Eye Strain:
Brightness:
Compact Mode:
Compact mode doesn’t erase the sins of this window.
The eye strain is significant, as you have clashing shades of grey to try to subtly discern to understand what is going on in this very busy pane. Take for example this simple footer:
The greyed-out probe launcher icon, “reconnect” icon, “recall” icon, 3 “launch in formation” icons, “center on my ship” icon, and the word “launch” all are crazy noisy and busy. Additionally, the default blue highlight on the button really feels too close to these greys, which just compounds to the eye-strain problem. Especially because right above this pane are more colors and more greys conveying what can and can’t be warped to, whether it is hovered or not, etc.
D) Any Chat Window that displays standings
Eye Strain:
Brightness:
Compact Mode:
Quite simply, “Excellent Standing” is incredibly straining on the eyes to see on a black background.
I just went back to my old settings to check, because I remember it being hard to see in my preferred theme as well. And yes, this was a problem with the old UI, but I had “solved” it by choosing a particular theme that melded the dark blue color with the background, so I didn’t have to notice the problem. The new UI absolutely requires a black background for some reason, contributing to contrast issues.
E) The Black Background
Eye Strain:
Accessibility:
The black background appears to be RGB(16, 16, 16) or #101010 based on loading up images into Krita. This is close enough to being “purely black background” and there’s good reasons no applications actually have “pure black” be their “dark mode”. And that reason is simple: users with OK eyesight experience halation. Beyond that, there is also an accessibility concern: users with astigmatism have it worse.
You can readily find “rates of astigmatism in adults” and “pure black background and halation” and such and figure out how it all ties together and why this is a big issue.