Getting stuck in

We have our idea, or so we think for now.

Our intentions for the product have changed slightly, but they still focus on reminding people of past events and memories, while simultaneously making people more aware of the amount and quality of photos they take.

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Due to the largest contributor to masses of photos being down to smartphones, what better way to tackle it than from inside. Trojan horse style. Just without the attacking/hacking and the destruction. More like a Trojan shetland pony, it’s a little less scary, but more fun and kind.

Sketchbook diagram of the basic App and Product function.

We’re primarily designing an app. Along with a tie in product to further the experience.

The App
Our app will go through your phone and it will select a photo at random, potentially using a customisable AI. Allowing you to select what you want to be chosen out of your camera roll; people, places, events, pets, etc.

Facial recognition is getting scarily good recently so it shouldn’t be too hard. There’s already systems in development to recognise humorous photos. Scary.

How hard could it be to harness facial recognition and ways to distinguish other photos without faces…?

With said chosen photo, it will remind you that you have it with a little notification on your phone. (The timeframes for how often and when you want photos to be selected will be customisable in the settings, to tailor to how many photos you take.)

You will be taken to the app where you can decide what to do with it. The options will be along the lines of:

1. Share your photo; send it to a friend/contact, perhaps share to social media
2. You can skip the photo, if it’s terrible and you do not want to be reminded of it, however the skips would be limited. (causing you to consider how many pointless photos you would want to have on your phone)
3. Finally, to display your photo – either changing your phone background to a temporary/ permanent one. Or to send it to the tie-in product.

The Product
It will allows you to display  your photos on a digital screen, similar to a digital photo frame, one that will be connected through wifi or similar means, perhaps to your account for the app.

The frame will (ideally) adjust itself from portrait and landscape positions according to the photo display, and will work wall mounted or sat independently. Additionally the frame will have a small printer build into the back of it, that, should you like the image enough you can press the button from the display to then print your image, in a very polariod-esque fashion.

We would use the same technology we investigated in our previous idea, a ZINK (zero ink) paper, with a small digital, adjusted, pocket printer. essentially a bluetooth Polaroid printer but vamped up a bit. We’d scale up the printer from the existing product technology to deliver slightly larger photos.

ZINK   Printer

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That’s pretty much our idea as of yet. Currently we are in the development of a look, to get started with developing the branding, the app’s UI and the aesthetic for the photo frame too. Allowing us to challenge the norms and aesthetics of app and product design.

We’re pretty excited to get working on this and to finally get stuck in.

 

 

 

Researchin’

Our three weeks of research are up now, and after collecting our survey results, interview answers and collecting our own personal research elements, we collaborated our efforts into a couple of research boards to holistically show off  the results.

We summarised our research into a few interesting key points, and came up with suggestions of how we might tackle the problems

• Restrict the number of photo people take? Make them more precious?
• Find a way to make photos more valuable again People like having printed photos – make it easier / more accessable somehow?
• Film cameras(disposable) are fun because they’re cheap and suspenseful
• Make developing SLR/Films easier or create a blend of digital convenience with the fun of SLR

Initial Research

Conclusive Info

We will be considering these results and points during our next stage of development of idea generation to create our product/experience.

 

The current state of the Camera

 

Research; thoughts and summary on already existing Cameras and their issues.

After conducting some initial research into the current world of Photography it became apparent that due to there being so many different forms of Photography, Cameras and Social Media Platforms that Photo’s have become much less precious than they were when photography was a ‘new-fangled’ wondrous invention.

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When cameras were introduced the proposition of being able to take a snapshot of a moment was amazing, but it took time. Loads of time. As technology progressed we got portable film cameras. (amazing!) However this takes too long for the impatient, and the effort of having to go out to somewhere to print them, wait a few days or weeks then have to pick them up is laborious.

Enter the digital age; Photos galore! Hundreds of photos on one device? It’s almost like magic! No need to wait for them to develop! You can print them from your home printers! Load them into your fancy personal computers! Amazing!

Then some bright spark decided having a separate device to take photos and to make calls and texts would work so much better on one device. You could maybe even then send photos to people from phone to phone!

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Where we stand now is somewhere past this. The phones we have, have stronger cameras to the compact digital ones, they don’t have as much creative flexibility as a professional DSLR camera’s in terms of the photos it takes. But what will come of the ‘Future cameras’ and world of Photography in a few years time?

With everything shifting to digital format- the ability to take a photo needs only a button press. Additionally the digital format tends to be much more convenient when it comes to storage; it doesn’t take up much physical space but that means you can take many more photos that you could with a camera using film or plates. Due to the mass of photos we take, because of how easy it can be, the value of photos area greatly depreciated. Instead of taking a few treasured photos, thinking about the subject matter, lighting, angles etc.Our ability to take many photos rapidly means the ones of value are lost among the mediocre.

In order to bring back the value of photos and enhance their personal worth we need to try and limit ourselves, or come up with a way to really make us think about the photo’s we take.
Not to mention the less photos we take, would surely increase the quality of subject matter too, and it would flush out the garbage that clogs up all our social media feeds.

Perhaps reverting to a blend of the limiting and suspenseful analogue cameras, and digital file quality and convenience, we could make a much better, more valued experience with photography in the future.

-F