Photo-sharing application for Architects Anjali Arora Nov 7, 2004

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.

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

Preliminary User Research Questions asked in the survey: A.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 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.

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.

Findings of user research 1.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. 2.The cost of transmission of images through the cell-phone seen as a deterrent by this user group. 3.Privacy & control over who sees the images an important factor. 4.All the users would like the ability to have their pictures on a central web- server. 5.Ability to print pictures very desirable. 6.Ability to annotate the pictures important.

Task Analysis in current practice User takes picture with camera phone. User sends picture as attachment to person /s. User saves the picture on his computer, organizing pictures by job / project name.

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 ing 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.

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 ing 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. User First Name Last Name Mobile phone no Group Images Project Name Folder name Date & Time Image title Description GPS File size Project Name User 1 User 2 User3 User4