Photo Turntable
Creating your tangible & digital photo albums
PROJECT INFO
Mar.2013 - Jul. 2013
Master's Final Project
The Hong Kong PolyU
TEAMMATES
Individual Project
MY ROLE
Designing the system in an iterative process of user research, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
INTRODUCING PHOTO TURNTABLE
Photo Turntable is a hardware/software system that provides a tangible way to organize, view, and share digital photos. With a photo turntable, people can easily create their favorite albums, view and share digital photos with their family and friends within their home environment.
USER RESEARCH
Photo is evolved from physical to digital in a short amount of time. To understand how people organize, view, and share their digital photos, user research is conducted in several methods, including interviews, observation, task walkthroughs, and artifact analysis.
How many digital photos do you have & how often do you review them?
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?
Nowadays, people take photos by the camera, cellphone, and tablet; they take photos when they are traveling, working, and eating; they share photos easily over distance by Flickr, Facebook, and Instagram, etc.
However, People rarely review their digital photos.
Compared with distance photo sharing, there are fewer opportunities for people to view and share digital photos within the home environment.
Too Many
Photo taking is cheap and easy so that everyone takes too many photos
Hard to Access
Too many steps to access the photos stored on the computer
Time-Consuming
Photo organizing and sharing is time-consuming
INSIGHTS
The following insights came from the different perspectives on digital vs. physical objects and how people share their memories through physical objects. By comparing music and photos, the reasons why music lovers enjoy the concept of vinyl albums are found.
Digital vs. Physical
People prefer to review physical photo albums at home. They print out the photos to personalize their home.
Physical Memory
People share their travel memory by physical objects such as souvenirs and even ordinary objects.
Photos vs. Music
Music lovers like the album concept, the meaningful covers and the exploration aspect of the music player.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
9 sessions of user workshops were conducted during the concept development phase. Different artifacts and an initial concept are prepared for the user evaluation. By walk through a use case, the participants actively gave feedback regarding the format, interactions, and visual representations, etc.
Photo Turntable
The system includes the software and the product. It provides a tangible way to organize, view, and share digital photos.
The Mini Projector
Digital photos limit the environment of photo viewing. The projector enables photo viewing and sharing in a much easier way.
The Software
The software makes photo organizing easier and provides a personalized cover for the albums.
PROTOTYPE
Behavior and appearance prototypes are developed to evaluate the concepts. For the software, clickable wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes are used. For the turntable product, Arduino is used to demonstrating the concept.
USER EVALUATION
By using behavior and appearance prototypes, 24 user evaluation sessions in total are conducted. The goal is to validate the content and interaction of the system and get feedback about what needs to be done next. The results showed that the system was easy to understand and use, and people found the product to provide an enjoyable experience.
