Facebook design manager Caitlin victor explains in a Medium post that the change was brought about after she noticed that while the man in the icon in the Facebook stylebook – or “glyph”- was symmetrical (except for his spiked hairdo, ) the lady “had a little chip in her shoulder”. The lady icon needed a shoulder, so I drew it in – and so began my many month descent into the rabbit hole of icon design.
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Robyn Beck-AFP/Getty Images A thumbs up or “Like” icon at the Facebook main campus in Menlo Park, California, May 15, 2012. Thanks to Caitlin victor, one of Facebook’s designers, the “Friend” icon unassumingly sitting in the upper right corner of the social network’s page has undergone some changes in recent months.
Victor also wrote that as a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon, the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in.
Victor wrote that she assumed no ill intentions, just a lack of consideration.
This time around, Facebook has made a tiny change on the friends icon, supporting gender equality, as you can see that the female silhouette in the friends icon is now in front of the male.
Continuing with the enhancements, victor fixed the icon’s hair design and she wanted to try out something different than the rather “Darth Vader-like helmet”. Check on your mibile device, at least, and you’ll see an updated female-up-front friends icon, though it doesn’t yet appear to be live on the website.
She was looking at the individual glyphs that are used in the icon.
Victor says the new male and female silhouettes have already been shipped out for desktop, and appropriate male and female icons are now designated in the new profile creation process.
After iterations where both the man and the woman were placed equally within the icon, victor ultimately decided on putting the woman in front, slightly smaller than the man.
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This is a good example of a company giving its employees freedom to do something they felt is important, which might improve the experience for some people, without affecting those of us who never noticed the icon in the first place.
