Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#2I think these are great. Totally different, a really nice change on otherwise boring avatars!
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#3Have the highest respect for the folks at 37signals, but this is definitely not a HN frontpage worthy post. I'm beginning to see almost every blog post by them on HN front page. No offense but it doesn't kindle the hacker's knowledge in any way.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#4They look very much like the original Mac OS icon/face.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Mac_OS_Logo_wi...
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#5Have the highest respect for the folks at 37signals, but this is definitely not a HN frontpage worthy post. I'm beginning to see almost every blog post by them on HN front page. No offense but it doesn't kindle the hacker's knowledge in any way.
I could not disagree more. I love posts like this. They took a very common idiom and re-imagined it in a fun and creative way. The insight into the process was interesting and really useful as a reference point for my own work.
More just like this please.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#6Have the highest respect for the folks at 37signals, but this is definitely not a HN frontpage worthy post. I'm beginning to see almost every blog post by them on HN front page. No offense but it doesn't kindle the hacker's knowledge in any way.
I could not disagree more. I love posts like this. They took a very common idiom and re-imagined it in a fun and creative way. The insight into the process was interesting and really useful as a reference point for my own work. More just like this please.
I have to agree. Getting insights on the small things like this demonstrate to me in simpler terms bigger ideas blogs like this communicate.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#7Have the highest respect for the folks at 37signals, but this is definitely not a HN frontpage worthy post. I'm beginning to see almost every blog post by them on HN front page. No offense but it doesn't kindle the hacker's knowledge in any way.
I thought this article was great and says a lot about the importance of details. In a way I see a lesson in the importance of details but I also see people concentrating entirely too much on something that may not deserve the amount of time that's going into it. But back to your original point - despite the fact that I liked the article I am also seeing the same pattern. To me it seems that either everything that gets posted on the 37Signals blog is pure gold or, more likely, it's like there's a Cult of 37Signals around here now. They have some good stuff but come on, the front page is starting to look like their personal RSS feed.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#8This seems similar to the problem solved by Gravatar with their automatically generated avatars, as well as similar services like robohash[1].
[1]: http://robohash.org/
I've used several sites like StackOverflow that use the automatically generated images from Gravatar, and they really do make the site more pleasant. Additionally, they make it easier to visually follow who posted what in a discussion.
The one difference (unless I misunderstood the article) is that these sorts of images are generated randomly from a hash and so are basically guaranteed to be unique. I think this is a big advantage as having two identical avatars in a discussion would just make it visually confusing to see who is who.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#9This is insightful especially since we have thought about this problem and had not come up with a solution. I am assuming all the icons will be unique though, else it may lead to a lot of confusion. Also, I believe people choose icons that they best identify with and if it is not unique their association with the icon may not be as strong.
Another thing I have experimented with is if you can upload a picture and create a hand drawn painting / image like Chris Dixon's or Fred Wilson's image which I think are brilliant in creating a brand and identity.
Re: Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures
#10A little trick I learnt from a fellow designer: Make the default profile pic the opposite gender from what you guess the user to be. Users are fine staring at an androgynous avatar but they'll rapidly upload their own pic to avoid others thinking they're a woman/man.