ASSIGNMENT
9: OVERVIEW
Problem
Statement
While
digital photos have become an integral part of our lives, collections
of digital photos are difficult for many people to manage. This
difficulty stems from a number of factors:
-
People tend to take lots of digital photos, because they cost
practically nothing to shoot and cameras can hold hundreds of
photos at time.
- It's
difficult and inconvenient to classify photos by hand at the time
of capture due to the limitations of the digital-camera interface.
- Photos
usually exist on computers with cryptic alphanumeric names that
bear little resemblance to their content (with the exception of
the time they were taken).
Addressing
this issue is essential since digital photographs represent an important
way people communicate with one another across distances and across
generations. Without effective ways to sort, filter, and organize
digital photographs, this rich source of information has little
value. As people accumulate more and more digital photos, it becomes
harder and harder to keep track of the ones that have special meaning.
Solution
Overview
The
PhotoCat system leverages point-of-capture metadata that can be
automatically collected by new photo-taking devices (camera phones
in particular).
It allows users to manage photos from their collection based on
time, location, and co-present others. The
system offers
two separate "views" for browsing photos:
- The
bull's eye view features circular bands that represent
units of time. Small thumbnail images appear on the bull's eye
according to the time in which the photos were taken. The view's
circular representation of time has similarities to analog clocks.
Users can filter the photos that appear in the bull's eye by location
and co-presence.
- The
other grid view displays photos in reverse chronological
order in a grid-like layout. The grid view shows the photos in
a more conventional way and allows for browsing by larger-sized
thumbnails since there are fewer space constraints (compared to
the bull's eye view). In the grid view, users can also filter
by location and co-presence.
Additionally,
a photo bin allows users to select photos of interest and
then share them, print them, or save them as albums.
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Personas and Scenarios
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