I am creating a rather complex iPhone app to keep track of data one usually needs to share with their Doctor [Why not just use the Health app you? Because it is super complex for simple tasks (takes 3 minutes to add ONE medicattion!))
Anyways. It allows the tracking of data for multiple people, so each person has a “profile”
My question is… for the “profile picture” I have 3 choices
A blue or pink circle with persons initials (as shown)
expend the effort to deal with the camera and allow a REAL Photo
Use one of the many cartoon avatars
I’m shying away from #2, for the added effort without a huge return on investment, as the main idea it to quickly determine gender. Not to mention the images are rather small, so detail / contrast etc might be a problem
If you’re planning to sell this I would avoid 2 also for privacy / HIPAA reasons. Cartoon avatars might be one case where they are the most explicit of available options (significance of color across cultures and for persons who are color blind is a problem). It’d be nice if even cartoon images had blue or pink background, then you get the best of both worlds.
I had not even considered the cultural aspects of the cartoon avatars… wonder if I could instead use the new advanced emoji where that can be controlled directly by the user
Yep, used to be that a silhouette with short hair or side curls would be fine but today it’s getting darned near impossible to suss out gender even in real life so I’d leave it to the user, lol. My stepdaughter takes gender-fluid friends in stride, but I have no desire to divine in an app I’m writing what mood the user is in today, so let them figure it out!
I would never use an emoji for a profile icon/avatar.
I may never use my photo.
My opinion: allow several colors for the circle and not just blue/pink.
Ah but where the bald one - like me ? I dont have a fancy swoopy hairline like that
no glasses ?
j/k
I kid you not I listened to a podcast just recently where the poor app developer spent more time trying to represent every possible whim in their avatars for people than writing useful app code
People bitched about how unrepresentative they were and …
Dev finally gave up and said “screw avatars” and basically opted for “pick a color + your initials on them”
Dont recall them saying they permitted or used pictures
But that would have meant anyone could upload whatever they wanted as their image and if it didnt look like them its their own damned fault
And the dev could get back to actually improving their app and not screwing around with such silly shit
I’ve built a similar app tailored to users in a particular country.
Apologies in advance.
Not trying to jam a stick in the spokes of your bike as you ride past, but I’m experiencing mild daja vu.
Learnings:
Never list multiple medical profiles. Only load the profile associated with the logged in AppleID etc, and never allow users to know the existence of another users profile (seek your own legal advice on this).
Never lazy load a profile without a login event (seek your own legal advice on this).
Lose any reference to gender, other than in words (data) buried deep in the user profile. From memory our app listed 72 entries for “other” genders. Pink and Blue aren’t going to cut it in 2022, you’ll need a large color palette I’m afraid. Please don’t ask me to explain the various genders.
Lose any reference to age (this is a massive turn-off and point of op-out particularly for female users). Users know exactly how old they are, and won’t thank you for reminding them.
Lose the profile picture / avatar, you can’t win that game without great effort. For reasons stated in 1 & 2 you don’t need to open that door anyway.
My overall message is to lose anything that might cause even the slightest personal offence.
Dave, If you are like me (I don’t register much on the emotional scale - but to my surprise others care passionately about the minutiae of their labels). So be careful.
One final thought, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should when it comes to medical data.