Apple Photos
New Feature Concept
Get back to the pleasure of glancing over memories in your photo library.
This is how I worked.
CHALLENGE
I really loved the iPhone 7 Memories commercial featuring De Niro. The universal pleasure of digging through an old shoe box full of childhood photos is a very clever approach.
The problem is that nowadays, we are no longer limited to 36 exposure films. With the smartphone and its 10,000+ photo storage, we are used to shooting everything, and many times, just in case the next one is better. We rarely delete anything.
Old shoe boxes are now photo libraries with unlimited storage, where our memories get lost among the millions of photos we upload each year.
Apple Memories is a solution to this problem, but I’m one of those people who thinks that selecting photos is the best part when creating an album.
Solution
Goal
Automatically clean the photo library of similar pictures without deleting anything or making a selection of best shots.
principle
Based on timecode, visual content analysis and locations, to group all nearly-identical photos together under one thumbnail, as the iPhone Burst mode does.
PROBLEM DEFINITION
Research
We take too much pictures.The total number of photos stored in the world is expected to grow from 3.2 trillion in 2015 to 4, 7 trillion in 2017 - Mylio.com report, Dec. 2016.
I interviewed some friends and looked through their photo libraries.
The most common problems are:
• Utilitarian images
• Nearly identical photographs
• Instant communication images that have been received
All of them said that it was easy to decide upon and delete utilitarian photos.
It was also easy to stop WhatsApp from automatically saving photos to their camera roll.
They did say, however, that it was difficult to choose and delete one or more of their similar photos. It was on this point that I focused on the issue of nearly identical photos.
Apple Memories: Advantages and Weaknesses
This algorithm automatically assembles sets of memories into pseudo-albums, based on what it “thinks” is most important, saving you from the boredom of organizing and culling. The result is very impressive.
By doing some research on the internet and reading a few users’ comments, however, I did find some negative points:
• Memories AI can fail to pick out your favorite shot from among nearly-identical pictures.
• There is a story behind each picture, even if it is an unpleasant one.
• The true pleasure, when you’re creating a photo album, is not looking at the final book, it’s more about digging deeply into all of your shoe boxes.
With those informations, I defined a few personas (light version) and problem statements:
THE YOUNG MOM
• Shoots around a hundred pictures per day, mostly of her son.
• Deletes one or two pictures if they are very bad, but keeps most of them.
“I don't want to delete any of my pictures; choosing the right one is too difficult!”
Photographer profile:
• Knows she should delete more photos but her son is in all of them… so she keeps them all.
THE LAZY AESTHETE
• Looks for the perfect composition or moment, continuing to shoot until he thinks he has the best one.
• Doesn’t like to review his photos after a shooting session.
• Waits to run out of space in his phone to upload in the Photo app.
“It will take me days, even weeks to clean my library. I feel overwhelmed just thinking of it!”
Photographer profile:
• Don’t want to waste his time to review and delete the photos just after shooting.
• Find there is too much to look through and he doesn’t have the time to clean his library.
TECH SKEPTICAL
• Would like to create a printed photo album but doesn't have a lot of time.
• Tried Memories to select his best pictures but he doesn’t think they are so.
“AI doesn’t understand what I like in my pictures”
Photographer profile:
• Likes Memories Videos but prefers to choose his best photos himself.
GENERATE CONCEPT /IDEA
Goal
Automatically clean the photo library of similar pictures without deleting anything or making a selection of best shots.
principle
Based on timecode, visual content analysis and locations, to group all nearly-identical photos together under one thumbnail, as the iPhone Burst mode does.
PROTOTYPing
My solution was to add a new slider in the Photos menu bar to group together all the nearly-identical pictures.
How it works
Mobile version
thank you for your time
Fell free to get in touch, I'm working as a freelance