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Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

boringavatars.com

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Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#71

Post by brk »

duxup wrote: post #68
awb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are good at remembering faces, but this is for people who don’t want to use their face. I don’t think the goal is to be memorable, just an easy way to be mostly unique.

I think the problem is that if you compare one to another (check out the sunset examples) ... they don't look unique.

IMO, when used is real life scenarios actual users would start to find the unique patterns and visuals in each one. It is hard to evaluate this as a passive viewer with no vested interest in any of the names/avatars as they are presented.

Personally, I saw enough general distinctive qualities among them that I felt like if I interacted with a handful of these avatars frequently that I would notice the minor differences easily.

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#74

Post by randomhodler84 »

postalrat wrote: post #65
IgorPartola wrote: post #43

Not to hijack this (I have zero affiliation with this project), but RoboHash has been my absolute favorite version of this: https://robohash.org/

Not to hijack robohash. But hashicon is better: https://github.com/emeraldpay/hashicon https://schumanncombo.com/hashicon

I don’t know man, robots are much cooler than color boxes. I think the robots win here.

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#75

Post by fsckboy »

onion2k wrote: post #60
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of just producing a set of notable people, they went with excluding men. I am not sure how we will ever achieve the supposed goals when they all seem to just be lip service and not about equality at all. How is this equal?

"When you are accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression." Stephanie Herrera

so, in your response to frankfrankfrank, help me parse it:

"When you are accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression."

what you are saying is that, now that women are accustomed to their privilege, equality (including men in the field of faces) would feel like oppression again, so best to leave them out?

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#76

Post by fouc »

IgorPartola wrote: post #43

Not to hijack this (I have zero affiliation with this project), but RoboHash has been my absolute favorite version of this: https://robohash.org/

I recognize robohash from gravatar mainly.

https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/images/

Gravatar provides 5 fallback custom avatars:

  identicon: a geometric pattern based on an email hash
  monsterid: a generated 'monster' with different colors, faces, etc
  wavatar: generated faces with differing features and backgrounds
  retro: awesome generated, 8-bit arcade-style pixelated faces
  robohash: a generated robot with different colors, faces, et

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#77

Post by ivyirwin »

I really like this. We've attempted similar ideas on projects before based on first/last initial and it never turned out like I wanted. I like the simplicity of your execution and the range of styles you created. I get that some of the feedback is about them being too close together, but for practical applications, I think you would see enough variation in a small subset for it to be effective. Well done!

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#78

Post by nickjj »

awb wrote: post #59
nickjj wrote: post #46

They look cool but aren't avatars mainly used to uniquely identify someone based on a picture? A lot of these look too similar. The really boring approach IMO is to choose a random solid color and put the user's initial(s) on top of it. This makes it pretty unique and much easier to associate someone back to their avatar.

There are only 676 unique 2 letter pairs or 17.5k 3 letter letter initial triplets, and initials aren’t evenly distributed so there’s a ton of non-uniqueness in that approach for a platform with millions of users.

> there’s a ton of non-uniqueness in that approach for a platform with millions of users

Sure but context is everything.

Chances are millions of users aren't all posting in the same thread / post / chat room / etc. at once. There might only be a few dozen or even hundreds of them, and the odds of hitting 2 people with the same name + similar color are really low then. Plus on top of that, some users will have custom avatars they've uploaded to make the sample size even less for running into a collision.

Google also happens to use the random color + first initial pattern too and they have over a billion users. It works, even in a busy Google Doc.

Re: Boring Avatars – React library to generate custom avatars

#79

Post by williamdclt »

duxup wrote: post #68
awb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are good at remembering faces, but this is for people who don’t want to use their face. I don’t think the goal is to be memorable, just an easy way to be mostly unique.

I think the problem is that if you compare one to another (check out the sunset examples) ... they don't look unique.

I'd say unique enough to differentiate people within a conversation, which is good enough for a lot of use-cases
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