
Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures - gr366
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3104-behind-the-scenes-reinventing-our-default-profile-pictures
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tikhonj
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.

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shalmanese
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.

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betterlabs
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.

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batista
_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.

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

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michaelbuckbee
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.

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maaku
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/>

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

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Mac_OS_Logo_wi...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Mac_OS_Logo_with_Text.svg)

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rvivek
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.

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enjo
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.

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

