Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures

Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures(37signals.com)

69 points by gr366 14 years ago | 14 comments

tikhonj 14 years ago |

This 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.

shalmanese 14 years ago |

A 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.

betterlabs 14 years ago |

This 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.

batista 14 years ago | |

I am assuming all the icons will be unique though, else it may lead to a lot of confusion

I think this might just be a programmer's way of (over)thinking it : "the users are unique, so the avatars must be unique, or chaos ensues". In actuality it will just be mildly confusing at best, but nothing earth shattering. You still have the name next to the avatar for reference, as well as the project, and with several dozens of them, most will be different still.

sirbrad 14 years ago |

I think these are great. Totally different, a really nice change on otherwise boring avatars!

michaelbuckbee 14 years ago |

I'm not sure if it is still the case, but HypeMachine used to have their default avatar be an angry looking picture of Dick Cheney.

I can only imagine the number of people rushing to upload their own image in place of our former veep.

maaku 14 years ago |

Or do something cool with the default. At the NASA astrobiology institute they have little astronaut silhouettes for the default profile pic:

http://astrobiology-beta.arc.nasa.gov/directory/carey-sean/

schraeds 14 years ago |

They look very much like the original Mac OS icon/face.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Mac_OS_Logo_wi...

rvivek 14 years ago |

Have 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.

enjo 14 years ago | |

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.

imjoel 14 years ago | | |

I have to agree. Getting insights on the small things like this demonstrate to me in simpler terms bigger ideas blogs like this communicate.

jfarmer 14 years ago | |

I'm a hacker. It kindles my knowledge. Speak for yourself.

batista 14 years ago | |

Well, this is not a place for "hackers" with the hardcore definition of the term. The linux development mailing list or Lambda the Ultimate might be better candidates. There are people of all skills on HN, from hardcore C programmers, to front-end developers, to front end guys, to entrepreneur guys, to programming enthusiasts, to designers, to system administrators and operations guys.

The topic of the post is highly relevant to a lot of stuff, from thinking about UI problems, to iterating on a problem, to business decisions, to the avatar issue in specific, etc.

Much much better than the not so unusual fare of "Show HN: I made a clone of reddit in Visual Basic, come see" or "How we got burned storing customer credit card info in plain text on a in memory database on an old overclocked Pentium-III under a cupboard in our kitchen".

billpatrianakos 14 years ago | |

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.