Comment by jmstfv

UPDATE:

* rounded corners to make rectangles look more pleasant

* switched to pastel colors to lower the contrast and make the grid less taxing for the eyes

Thanks everyone for the input!

You might have to do 144 circles instead, I think that would have enough whitespace around each one to stop the illusion.

Fiddled around with it a bit and if you reduce the spacing between the boxes to a few pixels the illusion goes away for me or is barely noticeable. But, the aesthetics of the whole thing are quite different then.

Eliminate all space in between rectangles. Aesthetics be damned.

Or add the circles intentionally? At least they wont pop in and out then.

Seems better with a border radius of 1.25rem. Also making the border thickness very thin seems to help, as well as some making it more oblong.

Reduce the contrast, i.e. make the black less black.

Maybe try using circles instead of rectangles, and the progress within each circle is shown like a pie chart?

Rounded corners might help?

Try hexagons, they’re equidistant between centers.

Could rounded corners help here?