Icons #5

This was one icon group that we went back, and forth on. We tried a space themed version at one point. That ended up being very unreadable, and confusing to end users.

Then we tried to associate sexes to the icon (male vs female), and that ended up creating a whole wave of critique, and numerous revisions. There was concern that we were limiting a user's identity to either male or female, and auto-assigning one of the avatars based on a user's profile settings was problematic, as that was something which wasn't always available in our historical user data.

In the end I decided a simple contact icon was the best approach. The design is flexible enough to reuse in the group, and add contact roles. The lesson is that sometimes a simple solution is all that is needed.