User Interaction:

Meeting with many users throughout the semester, our team heard stories about their lives and families, about the communities in which they circulated and the activities they enjoyed. We followed them through their daily routines, from afternoon editing to 4 AM shoots.

Our team of four interviewed and observed users, mapped motivations and values, created personas and narratives, identified areas of opportunity, ideated, built sketch models, observed user interactions, accepted user input, revised ideas, and created final models and interaction stories. Some of these are highlighted below. Click on the thumbnails for full-sized images.

	User Values: Exploration of the values of our users highlighted the intersection and differentiation of our beliefs. We came back to these values repeatedly throughout the process.
	User Personas: After shadowing and interviewing several photojournalists, we created user personas to give a general glimpse of what we had learned while removing the specific personal attributes that might make us connect with one user over another.
	Idea Generation: After generating over fifty ideas, we needed a way to reduce our list to ten to continue through to the next phase. We voted via colored post-it notes and chose the ideas with the most votes. Through this process, we discussed the results and rationale, thus allowing for further flexibility.

Two of our ideas are presented below...

Digital Photo Business Cards

"I do all of my own publicity, and I'm always looking for more ways to get my name out there" - 'Bruce'

Allowing photojournalists to take a picture in the field and immediately set it as the background of their business card would provide new and more personalized ways to approach and communicate with potential customers. Since most photojournalists self-promote, they appreciated the new spin this emerging digital paper technology places on the age-old business card.

StableCam

"Yeah, they give me a hard time since I don't have very steady hands, and I can't carry a tripod everywhere, so I'm always looking for something to prop against." -'Jill'

Shadowing 'Jill' one afternoon, we noticed that she would often lean on table tops to steady her camera. No matter what current solution the photographers would use, it never allowed them enough stability to be able to shoot low-light situations without a tripod. Our solution was a gyroscopically stabilized module inserted in place of a side grip to provide momentary stabilization of the camera.