Notification Icon: Woman Has More Prominent Status On Facebook Notifications

Facebook’s female notification icon will be featured more prominently in a way that promotes the idea of “ladies first.” Facebook’s notification icon features the woman more distinctively, The Boston Globe reports.

As the report notes, it’s a “subtle nod to gender equality.” The social media network has modified the woman silhouette to appear larger than it was when alerting users to updates from friends and family.

The woman notification icon before was seen slightly positioned behind the man, whereas now, she’s slightly in front of him. The woman’s hairdo has changed as well from her once generic look to a more modern look. Facebook design manager, Caitlin Winner, is the one who spearheaded the change icon’s significant change. She wrote a post on Medium which explained why she thought a change had to take place.

“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.”

The notification icon isn’t something that was a formal initiative. Alternatively, it was someone’s side project that was motivated by a poster that reads, “Nothing at Facebook is someone else’s problem.” It was then that Winner took it upon herself to tinker around with the icons and saw a chip in the female icon’s shoulder so the male silhouette could be placed in front.

Winner explains what she did to the Facebook icon.

“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.”

“After fixing her shoulder I was tempted to remove the Darth Vader-like helmet and give her hair some definition. Ponytails felt modern, if a little youthful, but at 32 pixels the pony resembled a small rodent more than a hairdo. Silhouettes with long hair or very full hair were similarly hard to disambiguate at reduced sizes and eventually I landed on a slightly more shapely bob.”

Other group icons in which the woman icon sat behind the man have now changed as well. The Facebook notification icon now has a lady that takes a more pronounced stage with a new hairdo in tow.

The change in this Facebook feature happens at a time in which equality is a major issue in society. Winner helped Facebook make more progress in that department.

[Image via Medium/dolphfyn / Shutterstock.com]