Overview Pixaura was designed and prototyped by a team of six students for their Masters HCI Capstone Project at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. They worked closely with their client, Dr. Steven Drucker from Microsoft Live Labs, during the seven month-period from January to August 2007. The advent of digital photography has made capturing and saving photos cheaper and faster. This leads to increasing amounts of digital photos to manage, and more opportunities to share stories through these photos. This process, starting with capture and ending in sharing, has been defined as the digital photo lifecycle. It consists of three key stages: triage, authoring, and viewing. Past studies of this lifecycle have predominately focused on the authoring and viewing stages, leaving triage largely unexplored.  Photo triage is the decision-making process involved in sorting through and organizing photos. During triage, users select desirable photos, and delete unwanted ones. Triage occurs frequently during the photo lifecycle, from deciding where to store acquired photos, to selecting which photos to create photo-based experiences with. Even at the point of sharing, triage occurs to supply the dynamic conversation with relevant photos. However, having a vast number of digital photos hinders triage and can create barriers to organizing and sharing photos. Enhance the triage experience as a leisure activity for non-expert photo sharers as they prepare to communicate the stories that are connected to their photo collection. |
