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On October 21, 2014 I posted some questions on facebook with regard to the design of a photo archive app. Below is the questionaire with the results.

I am looking at building an Android app to easily access my photo archive. I would like to know what people would be looking for in a mobile app for the Grivel photo archive.

If you're curious, the Web version of the archive can be seen at http://71.179.231.147:31415/cgi-bin/photos/phbrowse

I would appreciate if people who have mobile devices (smart phones, tablets) could think about what they would be expecting of a mobile photo app, and answer the following questions. If you feel that multiple answers apply, please say so and also indicate which you think would be appropriate as a default.

  1. What do you expect to see when you open up the app?
    1. Blank screen
    2. Splash screen / welcome message
    3. Last photo you saw previously
    4. Latest set of photos added to the archive
    5. First photo that you haven't seen yet
    6. List of years in the archive to drill down (same as web app)
    7. Search box
    8. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: B.
    • Alison Page: E, F, G, H (random pic of the day)
    • Mark Grivel: B, splash screen with a few simple graphical buttons for things like Most Recent Set, Search, etc.
    • Ineke Tuller: G or F.
    • David Rusting: A.
  2. The archive is organized in "sets" where each set is all the photos taken on a particular day. When you are browsing through a set, what would you expect to happen when you reach the end of the set?
    1. Stop and display a message that the end was reached
    2. Start over at the beginning
    3. Display an overview of the set in "thumbnails" (small photos)
    4. Automatically go to the next set
    5. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: A. plus the option to go to a previous or next set, or the overview
    • Alison Page: B.
    • Mark Grivel: A, blank picture that prompts to go to the previous set, overview, and next set.
    • Ineke Tuller: A. and a possibility to go to the next set.
    • David Rusting: E. (A button to go to the next album and one to go back to the home screen)
  3. How would you like to see the overview of a whole set?
    1. Small thumbnail showing the whole photo, the way the web archive does
    2. Square thumbnails taken from the middle of the photo, the way facebook does
    3. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: A. Not sure if that would work for a phone screen though.
    • Alison Page: B, C. (easy to swipe between pics on the phone)
    • Mark Grivel: A, thumbnail of entire picture.
    • Ineke Tuller: A.
    • David Rusting: A.
  4. When you're looking a individual photos, how would you go back to looking at the overview of the whole set?
    1. An option in the menu
    2. Swipe / slide down gesture
    3. Swipe / slide up gesture
    4. Pinch (zoom out)
    5. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: A.
    • Alison Page: A.
    • Mark Grivel: E, back button.
    • Ineke Tuller: A.
    • David Rusting: D.
  5. When looking at the individual photos, the photo will often not exactly fill the whole screen. When the photo is scaled to exactly fill the screen height, the photo's width may be greater or less than the screen width. How would you want the photos displayed when it doesn't exactly fit the screen?
    1. Scaled with black bars at either the sides or the top and bottom, depending on the format of the photo
    2. Expanded to fill the whole screen, with either the sides or the top and bottom cut off, depending on the format of the photo
    3. Expanded to fill the whole screen as in (b), but with a scroll bar so the photo can be moved up and down or sideways
    4. Only display the center of the photo at the highest resolution, and scroll bars for both up/down and left-right scrolling
    5. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: A.
    • Alison Page: C.
    • Mark Grivel: A, with the option of double clicking it to display D and allow me to manually scale it by pinching in and out.
    • Ineke Tuller: D.
    • David Rusting: E. (C. without the bars, bars are ugly..)
  6. What kind of browse / search functions should there be in the menu?
    1. Display list of years and drill down
    2. Use calendar widget to go to a particular month, or even a specific day
    3. Search for keywords in the photo's title or description
    4. Search for people in the photos (which will only work for as far as people have been tagged in the photos)
    5. Go to first / last set in the archive
    6. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: F. keywords and names
    • Alison Page: A, B.
    • Mark Grivel: The more search functions the better.
    • Ineke Tuller: B.
    • David Rusting: F. (it would be fun if we could use A, C and D)
  7. Should the textual info (title, description, and date/time, as available) be displayed on the phone app?
    1. No, just display the photos
    2. Display just the photo, but make the additional info available upon request (please explain how to indicate that the extra info must be displayed)
    3. Display the extra info for just a few seconds, then remove it
    4. Wait a few seconds before displaying the extra info on top of the photo
    5. Always display the extra info
    6. Other (please explain)
    Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: B. Perphaps add a little icon that you can click, like a question mark or a light bulb or something in the upper right corner.
    • Alison Page: B. (I like Nicoline's idea)
    • Mark Grivel: Have the Settings Menu contain a button for details.
    • Ineke Tuller: D.
    • David Rusting: F. (A function to display the text, and to hide it)
  8. Please add any additional thoughts or ideas you may have. Responses:
    • Nicoline Smits: ?
    • Alison Page:
    • Mark Grivel:
    • Ineke Tuller:
    • David Rusting: Share button (if you didn't thought about that already)
Thanks in advance, Eric