

Show HN: Simple User Icons - andrewcooke
http://www.parti.cl

======
morrow
I like the minimalist design of the site, and I think your idea is the most
visually appealing of all the default avatar options out there.

Some ideas:

 _Landing page:_

\- Add at least a quick blurb / product explanation to give first-time-
visitors a quick, visual idea of what the product is (maybe even an alice/bob
style demo conversation).

\- Have more descriptive action choices "ready? start now for free" and "Learn
more" instead of just "about/configure". About pages are somewhat ambiguous
and can sometimes just be about the company / the people behind it instead of
the product explanation, you're basically giving first time users nothing and
hoping curiosity prevents them from bouncing. I'd say give them at least a bit
of a hook to get them to venture further.

 _About page:_

\- Enlarge and really highlight the alice/bob chat box -- this is the main
function and selling point of your app and is the first/only time it's
visible, and it's kind of tiny.

\- Cleanup the available styles example a bit -- it seems like you're showing
every possible style available which when placed all together next to each
other looks downright busy. I would pick maybe 3 or 4 icons that showcase the
important variations available (size, cell-margin, color variation, etc.) and
showcase only those, maybe with alice/bob style examples to show what they
would look like in the flow of a conversation versus directly next to each
other.

 _Configure page:_

\- Change the phrase "New users receive a free credit to evaluate the site" to
something like "Try the service out for free" or "Evaluate the service for
free" Explaining the whole credit thing on the sign-up page is way too much
for someone just looking to test the waters in my opinion.

\- Simplify or better organize the small print section, maybe separate out
into sub-sections: explanation of how billing works, what you can expect from
particl as a service, etc. At this stage in the signup process, you haven't
necessarily sold the customer yet, don't lose them with scary large blocks of
confusing text, especially if it's unnecessary. I'd either make it digestible
or move it to a more appropriate section of the site and link to it.

 _General ideas for the business model -- I frankly don't see people footing a
monthly bill for -just- visually attractive default user icons. I think for
this to work, you have to add something else into the mix, here's what I've
thought of:_

\- Solve the color-blind / accessibility issue and highlight that feature

\- Offer a turnkey service for site owners to drop in to their own server,
maybe even a complete commenting solution if possible.

\- Offer a hosted complete commenting solution similar to disqus but with a
premium and minimalist design.

\- Offer tiers of service based on number of registered users, so sites start
out with your service because it's free, and stick with it because it works,
it's already in place, has good design, and is affordable.

\- This is a bit hokie, but maybe offer a way to hash something more
meaningful than a username, like say have a "personality quiz" that generates
a badge for you based on your answers to questions.

\- Have the user icons form a photo mosaic of something - maybe the site's
logo?. I realize this would be difficult due to the simplistic color palette
most logos have, but you might be able to come up with something for this.

\- Sell directly to the avatar-holder. I think there is a bit of cognitive
dissonance between people who won't upload a photo to their account where they
feel obligated to the community to put something there and want to customize
their online persona, but don't want to reveal their identity to the internet.
I think you could capitalize on this by offering a way for people to assuage
their "guilt" over not contributing by maybe offering a service where you
could donate to a cause, and in exchange get an exclusive avatar that has to
do with the cause they've contributed. This would let people 1) feel less
guilty about not "joining" in on the community 2) make their online
interactions more personalized safely 3) spread awareness for a cause they
care about 4) give those who care about it a little badge of honor. Maybe
combine this idea with the mosaic idea and let people have a "piece" of
whatever image represents whatever charity.

~~~
andrewcooke
thanks for all that. will think them all over. have been very surprised by the
number of responses here (just woke up).

the single level of service came from before the GAE pricing update when i was
aiming at a dollar a month. do you think even that is too high for people to
consider?

~~~
morrow
No problem - just what came to mind when looking at it. For any things you do
consider changing, be sure you are keeping good track of the relevant
statistics to help you know what is working and what isn't.

I don't think $1 a month is too high; I think the main difficulty will be just
getting the consumer to overcome the mental friction inherit in any online
purchase, especially subscription purchases. You're going to have to convince
people it's worth getting their wallet out for in the first place, and after
that I would guess you could price it anywhere between $1 and $10 and it
wouldn't drastically change how many people convert. That's at least given the
current state of the product - if you can demonstrate more value, then you may
have an easier time convincing people to spend their money on it.

I still think your best bet is to offer a free plan to small userbases, and
then charge them once they grow beyond a given size. You could reassure them
that they won't lose their images or have their account held hostage if they
don't upgrade, it will just be frozen at the max limit of user icons. I would
also offer 2 upgrade plans: a basic plan which includes 1 or 2 styles/sizes of
icon, and a premium plan with all the customization options. The goal of this
would be to make the basic plan more attractive while allowing those who need
to customize to do so. Another idea is to pin the free userbase option as a
"startup" option, and sell it as a gesture of goodwill towards entrepreneurs
vs. a free/paid plan.

I really don't know much about GAE, but do they have some way to sell this as
a GAE-compatible plug-in to other App Engine users? That might be a good route
to take if they do.

------
mtogo
Similar: <http://robohash.org/> and <http://gravatar.com/> (using the
identicon feature)

~~~
moe
I prefer robohash by far.

~~~
akavi
It'd be nice to see some more face-centric auto-avatars like robohash, but in
a variety of styles.

While they're pretty cool looking, the cartoon-y feel doesn't necessarily work
with every site design.

------
zavulon
I'm not colorblind, but the color pattern looks very similar to all "If you're
colorblind, you can't see the difference" images out there..

Of course, I could be wrong, but if I were you, I'd have a colorblind person
test this.

~~~
andrewcooke
oh, that's a very good point. thanks. first thought is that relying less on
variations in hue and using more variations in intensity would help. hmmm.
going to experiment. thanks again.

~~~
bornon5
You might have meant this by "intensity", but you're going to want to vary
lightness, not saturation. They should be distinguishable in grayscale.

~~~
Zev
I suspect that by using the word "intensity" to describe what he's going to
change, andrewcooke is well aware of this already :)

For everyone else: there's a color model that is occasionally used in computer
vision called Hue Saturation Intensity, which pretty much describes the theory
of color that andrewcooke and bornon5 are talking about.

~~~
exhuma
Yes... I mixed up the terms. Thanks for spotting that.

While I have never fooled around with it, I think using the LAB colorspace
could be interesting as well. As I remember from my psy course, the two most
common forms of colorblindness are red/green and yellow/blue.

Given that the LAB colorspace models these _exact_ axes, it could be
interesting for something like this.

But as I said, I have not yet investigated a lot in this direction.

------
csomar
Well, I don't see how this can be useful. Human brains are terrible in
remembering faces, but not in remembering colors. Actually, comparing the
icons (to find out if they are the same or not) is quite hard. Have you tried
it?

~~~
andrewcooke
it's not intended to replace photographs. in fact, one thing i would hope to
do in the future is allow people to upload photographs. instead, it's meant to
replace the auto-generated images that already exist that use IP addresses
(like on stack-overflow, for example). those are really ugly; mine are much
nicer (and more flexible).

while i was developing this approach i tried lots of ideas. it's actually
quite hard to get images with (1) a wide range, to avoid "collisions", (2)
attractive designs, and (3) coherent forms (that don't look like a random
mess, making them easier to remember). one of the things that helps a _lot_ in
making these more distinctive/individual/memorable is the diagonal symmetry.
another is the generally consistent hues within any one icon.

~~~
exhuma
> [...] those are really ugly; mine are much nicer (and more flexible).

This is a matter of personal preference. The more people you ask, the more
opinions you will get. I could chip in mine, but that would serve no purpose.

You could see statements like these as a form of libel/defamation. While the
statements are not necessarily false, they may cast a negative light on
whomever is generating these images (in this case, gravatar.com).

I would try to avoid these statements, and simply go ahead with your project.
And let the people decide for themselves which one they prefer.

~~~
mtogo
He's being honest. The existing solutions aren't any good, so he made one that
is better.

There are thousands or millions of FOSS projects that were started because the
existing ones are bad, and they've all said that they were started because the
existing ones are bad. It's just the way it works.

Now, if both he and his competitors were serious companies with a handful of
employees that were charging money, then it would be less appropriate. But
they aren't. His project was created because the competition's projects are
ugly, and he should be able to say that.

------
ronbeltran
<http://www.parti.cl/purge_memcache> did i just cleared your memcached?

~~~
andrewcooke
apparently so. thanks for that. the images are so small that they are also
cached in the datastore (they are cached at every level - in html, in
memcache, and in the datastore), so this is not a big deal at the moment (with
just a hundred or so images), but i need to disable this in the future.

------
andrewcooke
I've been working on this on weekends for a while now; it's now stable enough
for some early adopting... Please report any bugs and feel free to ask
questions. You can also contact me at andrew@parti.cl. Thanks.

~~~
arkitaip
How will the new GAE pricing affect you? So far we've been hearing some pretty
disheartening stories.

~~~
andrewcooke
Good question :o(

When it was first announced it seemed terrible - the estimate for even the
unused development site was significant. But then I tracked that down to some
dumb coding of my own (a much-too-frequent cron-job). With that fixed, the
site is pretty efficient (which is by design - it's supposed to scale well,
after all). So I'm hoping it will work out OK. This is very much (I think) the
kind of site that should work well on GAE - there's a _lot_ of scope for
caching.

And this is one motivation for posting here - I want to see how well it
handles higher traffic. Hopefully from that I can work out what a decent
amount to charge would be (originally I was hoping for as low as a dollar a
month a feed, but the changes may push that higher - perhaps significantly
so).

------
esk
That's a very attractive site, and I really find the icons attractive, too
(though I imagine they'll be unhelpful for people with difficulty discerning
colors).

I thought I'd let you know that you have "DEBUG = True in your Django settings
file"[1], which reveals your various routes. This might be unintentional.

[1]: <http://www.parti.cl/icon/your-site/code/users-name>

------
damoncali
I'm not trying to be rude, so don't take this the wrong way, but what is the
point of this? What problem/desire does it address? I'm just not
understanding.

------
artursapek
This sort of mosaic-y, rigidly geometric style would only fit in with certain
website designs, and the colors in the examples are all extremely saturated. I
think having to sort through these would be really exhausting on the eyes.

Also, it reminds me of the geometric defaults Gravatar resorts to if someone
hasn't uploaded a photograph.
([http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/98287fc0f05ebed1c2aae6bc2d236...](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/98287fc0f05ebed1c2aae6bc2d236d3a?s=80&d=identicon))
([http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3fbdc6a307d10a1725a54b2b391b5...](http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3fbdc6a307d10a1725a54b2b391b5cfd?s=80&d=identicon)).

I hate to say it, but it's a common rule of thumb in graphic design that
people like to see other people. Faces. That's what user icons tend to be,
because it's what works.

~~~
andrewcooke
see my answer elsewhere (and i'll update the site tomorrow) - this is not to
replace photos, but an alternative to other auto-generated icons.

also, if anyone wants less saturated images, or any other variation, please
contact me and i'll see what i can do. i'm happy to iterate this (for example,
things will likely be changing to address the colourblind issue raised
elsewhere).

------
Tichy
I prefer monsters or robots. Those abstract avatars tend to exert strain on my
brain. But I think we need more options for this kind of service, so kudos for
making it.

If you make such a service, I think you should put some research into what
kind of thing the brain is good at recognizing. For example I think brains are
almost hardwired for facial recognition (it is sort of a miracle that we can
tell people apart so easily - try it with people of other ethnicity to get a
feel for the problem). Not so much for abstract art I suspect.

------
ronbeltran
Oh you're running your site in Google Appengine.

------
gautaml
If you consider this UX design, you might as well use QR codes to represent
actionable items on a website.

I saw the word "Simple" yet it was far from it.

