Photosharing application for Architects

1
Photo-sharing application for Architects

• Anjali AroraNov 7, 2004

2
Professional needs of architects

• While there are several applications that allow
  for photo-sharing organizing for personal
  needs, there is currently no customized solution
  for the architect ( or related professions such
  as real-estate agents, interior designers,
  builders, contractors, etc)
• Some of the scenarios when an architect needs to
  take, save organize, share professional
  pictures
• - a new site / building she may have come
  across.
• - recording a work-in-progress as
  documentation / to share with staff.
• - to convey progress / take feedback from
  clients.

3
Preliminary User Research

• A survey was sent out to architects during this
  first-round of user research. The questions
  revolved around understanding
• their current usage of camera-phones to take,
  organize share work-related pictures
• Features / innovations they would like to make
  the entire process of picture-taking sharing
  more effective efficient.

4
Preliminary User Research

• Questions asked in the survey
• Your current practice 
• Do you use your cellphone to capture images for
  professional use?  
• If yes, please elaborate on the circumstances in
  which you use it, and what do you do with the
  images once you have captured them  
• If no, are you using other means to capture
  images such as a regular camera? 
• Do you email these images to colleagues?
• If yes, do you send them from your cellphone, or
  do you download the pictures to your computer
  before sending them off? 
• How do you organise these pictures for later
  use? 
• How easy is it to use your camera-phone for this
  purpose?
• What feature on your phone works best in this
  regard, which feature frustrates you?
• Any other comment you'd like to make. 

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Preliminary User Research

• Questions asked in the survey
•  B. Innovations / features you would like to see
  
• Would you like all your pictures to be available
  in one central web-space, so that they could be
  viewed retrieved any time?
• Would you like a feature that allowed you to
  upload your pictures directly from your
  camera-phone to such a website?
• Would you like to be able to post descriptions
  notes about the picture on the picture itself, or
  maybe alongside it? 
• Would you like to be able to print these
  pictures? 
• Any other features you would like.

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Findings of user research

• Camera phones are good to capture a fleeting
  moment, but are unsatisfactory due to low
  resolution of pictures, inability of
  camera-phones to allow a degree of freedom in
  composition. Digital cameras preferred.
• The cost of transmission of images through the
  cell-phone seen as a deterrent by this user
  group.
• Privacy control over who sees the images an
  important factor.
• All the users would like the ability to have
  their pictures on a central web-server.
• Ability to print pictures very desirable.
• Ability to annotate the pictures important.

7
Task Analysis in current practice

• User takes picture with camera phone.
• User sends picture as email attachment to person
  /s.
• User saves the picture on his computer,
  organizing pictures by job / project name.

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Task Analysis in current practice

• There is considerable excise in this process
• Identifying sending each picture to a person /
  group of persons. Transmission speeds may not
  permit emailing more than 2-3 images in one go.
• Saving the images on a computer periodically to
  free up space on the phone.
• Labeling, annotating, organizing each picture
  manually every time under the appropriate
  category.
• In case user is traveling but images are saved on
  an office desktop, images may not be immediately
  accessible.
• Thus a cognitive overhead exists to follow
  certain well-defined procedures to avoid
  inconvenience or worse.

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Task Analysis in current practice

• There is considerable excise in this process
• Identifying sending each picture to a person /
  group of persons. Transmission speeds may not
  permit emailing more than 2-3 images in one go.
• Saving the images on a computer periodically to
  free up space on the phone.
• Labeling, annotating, organizing each picture
  manually every time under the appropriate
  category.
• In case user is traveling but images are saved on
  an office desktop, images may not be immediately
  accessible.
• Thus a cognitive overhead exists to follow
  certain well-defined procedures to avoid
  inconvenience or worse.

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Design of this new app Phase 1

• This new application is intended to address
  rectify some of the problems associated with the
  picture-taking sharing process. Here is how
• After taking a picture / batch of pictures, user
  can upload them to one of several folders on his
  directory on the web server. The interface at
  the user-end to enable this will be kept as
  simple as is possible, while according high
  priority to security.
• The image thus captured will have attached to it
  metadata as follows- date time- GPS
  coordinates- an audio description of the
  context, any other details the user would like
  to annotate.

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Design of this new app Phase 1

• An SMS is sent out to the recipients or group
  members identified earlier as having permission
  to view this folder. The SMS informs the group to
  check out the latest additions.
• On the browser side, group members can check out
  these images at any time using assorted search
  methods by date, by location / city, by keywords
  attached through the audio annotation. The audio
  file sent along with the image is converted to
  text at the browser end, thus viewers of these
  images on the website see a text description of
  the picture.
• Similarly, the GPS coordinates are converted to a
  physical address on the website, for ease of
  locating the site.

12
Web Interface

• Research into photo-sharing in the traditional
  mode with prints has revealed that users highly
  value the ability to pull out a couple of
  pictures from a heap, compare them, discuss
  them.
• The web interface of this application will
  attempt innovative ways of organizing the images
  to allow some semblance of the above. Some ideas
  I will explore
• Alternatives to the gallery metaphor for display.
• Ways for people with permissions to combine their
  albums temporarily ( only on the client-side, no
  changes take effect in the database), in order to
  compare, contrast, discuss.

13
Database design

• The entities in my database will be To take
  into account chat / discussion threads, privacy
  controls share permissions how those affect
  the database design.

Images
User
Project
Project NameFolder nameDate TimeImage
titleDescriptionGPSFile size
First NameLast NameMobile phone noEmailGroup
NameUser 1User 2User3User4