Comment by drusepth
4 years ago
They're definitely overused in a lot of designs. They can be useful to portray some information at a glance in some data-heavy designs, but I don't find them helpful here -- I find them distracting.
Comparison CV with/without faces: https://i.imgur.com/u6FVLqr.png
i don't even get what the faces should indicate? former coworkers? people that the person was managing?
The best intent I can think of is showing 1) team sizes, and/or 2) potentially-recognizable faces that a recruiter might interpret as "oh, s/he worked with someone I know is good at X".
But both are likely wishful thinking: I'm sure it's just a list of faces of other users who've put that company/product on their own CV on that particular site, which 1) is an incomplete and unverified potential-subset of people (and therefore not a good representation of team sizes), and 2) hugely unlikely for it to ever be relevant to a recruiter (because how likely is it for your audience to recognize effectively-random faces?).
But yeah, could just as well be people they managed, or people from that company, or people who endorsed them for their specific work in that role, etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Distracting for sure.
It's also useless to the vast majority of readers, but since it is useful to some, a better option would be to have "X connections" (or "X colleagues") note that expands into a list on click. Color it gray, right-align and you now have a secondary info for those who need it, but out of the way for those who don't.
One could even go with a series of dots (or other visualisation), preferably in a neutral colour, that can be expanded to include faces, so you still get some visual indication of team/network size.
As is, it definitely just is visual clutter.