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x-port systems- an ecosystem for professional photographers

Research paper

Phygital solutions

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Scope

Experience design for phygital products

Focus

Professional photographer workflows

Time

8 weeks across 5 months

Team

Solo

a real phygital experience to ease and automate professional photography workflows that utilizes iot connections and existing pieces of technology to seamlessly tether the same into a 0-intervention workflow.

Visual storyboarding 📸

note- bag shown varies as per equipment, problems pertining to storage remain unchanged

Problem statement 📜

To improve the overall user experience of professional camera users by creating a smooth and intuitive interaction flow that allows users to easily access and navigate their data and manage it and share it in an efficient and effective way.

This includes addressing issues of

The goal is to create an experience that maximizes time savings while minimizing frustration and helping professional camera users adapt their redundant workflows to a modern one that helps them make the most of pre-existing technology in a tailored experience.

sorting

organizing

sharing

Ice-berg simulation 🧊

Event

Professional camera users spend way too much time on unnecessary steps of their data management and sharing process with too many technicalities. They face problems in delivering their output on time and redundant methods are too problematic even with modern technology.

Patterns

Newer technology is usually ported over to general consumer technology products and the pros are left with redundant processes.

Structures

Professionals and the industry tends to focus on the output without any regard for the process and efficiency is a nice to have rather than a need to have element in their workflows. Professionals also tend to be conservative with their ideologies on newer techniques.

Mental Models

Orthodox mental models of professionals

Resistance to change

Inability of professional grade software to maintain comptability

Secondary research 🔍

Data management 🗂️

Handling terabytes upon terabytes of data every month is a task like no other. Add human error into the mix and it’s the perfect recipe for inefficiency and under-utilisation of resources. It starts with having to sort through thousands of duplicates and choosing the best for delivery.

Key pointers:

Inefficient User Experience 😓

During a phase of technological ideologies where film cameras ruled the standards, software didn’t need to manage multiple duplicates and gigantic file sizes with complex delivery requirements due to the physical depletion of the film concept itself.

Key pointers:

Resistance to change ⛔

Professionals follow fine-tuned workflows with muscle memory and any obstruction in the same can cause a lot of discomfort. This further discourages any exploration of better alternatives to existing solutions.

Key pointers:

Comparative study 📊

Through surveys, it was discovered that on average, 77.8% of photographers use the photo-sharing mobile application of their respective camera brands but only rate it 2.5 out of 5. They reported several inconveniences which include the tediousness of the process and lack of professional tweaking, implying that the applications were solely built for the average non-enthusiast consumer and its wireless photo-sharing method is futile when it comes to lossless and reliant transfers.

Primary research 🫂

(Surveys and Interviews)

Sorting and Editing:

Sorting and editing are the most time-consuming parts of the workflow, consuming 50% of photographers' time.

Cataloging and selecting the best shots rated moderately difficult.

Archiving and long-term storage also pose challenges.

Desire for Efficiency:

88.9% of photographers desire workflow changes for higher efficiency and newer features.

The need for relief from the manual nature of duplicate sorting and archiving.

General Findings:

Photographers dread post-shoot processes, particularly manual sorting and archiving.

Overburdened feeling due to numerous post-shoot tasks.

Complex SD card management adds to frustration.

User task flow ⏱️

This is a sample of an aggregate of industry standard archiving systems.

Archiving system 🧾

This is a sample of an aggregate of industry standard archiving systems.

SD card filing 📂

Derived from an aggregate of the filing system of the top 6 camera brands. It’s complex nature and multi-level compartmentalization serves to be extremely problematic for data-dumpers who have to copy and amalgamate the data off of various SD cards repeatedly.