Facebook facelift puts women on top

Facebook has been busy updating its look. It's very subtle, so you'd be forgiven for missing it. Following on from last week's incredibly understated logo change (just believe us, the font is slightly different) comes an update to the friends icon. A minor thing, you might think, but with the current focus on diversity, it's one that is noteworthy.

The social network comes in for constant criticism; just about everything it does gets a negative reaction. If it's not complaints about Internet.org, it's the company's lackadaisical attitude to privacy. If people are not whining about changes to their news feed, they are questioning censorship. One Facebook designer was unhappy with the way the friends icon pushed a male figure to the front, while the female symbol shrank into the background. So she redesigned it.

Caitlin Winner is a design manager at the social network. Writing on Medium she explains how when browsing through the company's image library, she noticed two things about the female half of the friends icon -- the one that appears to the upper right of your news feed. The isolated version of the female icon had a chip out of her shoulder, while the familiar male-female version featured the man in front of a smaller woman. Winner decided to undertake a redesign, not only removing the chip, but also updating the hair.

But there was something else to tackle:

Next, I was moved to do something about the size and order of the female silhouette in the 'friends icon'. 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.

In the new version of the icon (see above), it is the woman who is in front (sans chip). It's a subtle change, but a small part of a bigger picture. And it sounds as though we might see more minor tweaks in future; Winner is on the lookout for those little cues that can mean so much:

As a result of this project, I'm on high alert for symbolism. I try to question all icons, especially those that feel the most familiar. For example, is the briefcase the best symbol for 'work'? Which population carried briefcases and in which era? What are other ways that 'work' could be symbolized and what would those icons evoke for the majority of people on Earth?

Any pet design peeves that you would like Facebook to take on next?