Pixaura

FINAL REPORT [PDF]

Album of Imported Photos

The user triage experience begins at the album dock, located at the bottom of the interface. The album dock contains the original set of photos imported to the application. While looking through photos in the album dock, it is easy to switch to a larger view of any photo. A smooth transition from thumbnail to large view ensures that the user does not lose context of the photo. The number of photos displayed in the dock can be increased to have greater context from the surrounding photos.

Photospace for Photo Piles

Dragging a photo from the album dock to the photospace creates a new photo pile in the photospace. More photos can be placed in the center of the pile or in the aura. When photos are placed in the aura of a pile, they are tentatively connected to that pile. Photos in the aura of a pile are not shared when the pile is, so that users can associate photos with a pile, even if they are not sure if they want to share them. In this way, the aura of a pile can be used to indicate privacy, uncertainty, or ranking within the pile.

The photospace and photo piles allow users the flexibility to "think with their hands" shifting photos among piles and their auras. Through such interaction, Pixaura combines the intuitive advantages found when moving photos in physical space with the added benefits of digital space. Besides laying out the piles to spatially show relationships, piles can also be labeled through the pile options menu, or directly in the title bar of an opened pile.

Refining Decision

To assist users in refining selections, Pixaura allows users to open a pile to look through the photos in greater detail. In this view, the traditional grid of photos is familiar to users, where they can reorder the photos and move them between the center and aura of the pile, as well as to other piles in the photospace.From the opened pile, users can also enlarge photos from both the center and aura to view them in greater detail to facilitate better decision-making.

Sharing Piles of Photos

To share, users can either drag a pile to a portal on the share tool bar, or select piles to share and click on the desired portal. The standard portals consist of the most common digital photo sharing mediums; email, web, and a presentation mode for sharing in person. In addition, users can create custom portals to frequent recipients or websites, and edit them as social demands change. These share portals bridge the gap between organizing and sharing photos, making it easy to stay socially connected through digital photos.