Concept:
Archchive is a web-based photo-sharing application geared
to the specific needs of architects.
Architects
are a group of professionals that use a good amount
of picture-taking and sharing as part of their jobs.
While there are several applications that allow for photo-sharing & organizing
for personal needs, there are currently few customized solutions for the architect
( or related professions such as real-estate agents, interior designers, builders,
contractors, etc).
Some of the scenarios when an architect
needs to take, save & organize, share professional pictures:
-
- a new
site / building she may have come across.
- recording a work-in-progress
as documentation / to share with staff.
- to convey progress / take
feedback from clients.
The design of this application will be governed by,
among others, considerations of digital
asset management.
A typical architect will have scores of pictures of various
projects available either on her computer or the network.
Over time, one loses track of available pictures ( not
to mention blueprints, documents, powerpoint presentations),
and thus is also lost the ability to reuse & repurpose
the same assets. In short, a possible asset is no longer
an asset as it cannot be easily found in the vast information
pool of a typical organisation.
Research reveals the following statistics:
- Creative professionals spend an average of 1 out
of every 10 hours of their time on file management.
Searches alone account for a full third of that time!
-- -from Gistics
research
- The average creative person looks for a media file
83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.
--from Canto Software
This design of this application will have the following
goals:
- Workflow Organization : To
enhance the efficiency & effectiveness of digital
asset management for that user / group of users. In
other words, to optimize the workflows so that the
job gets done with minimum effort & excise for
the user.
Also, to work in tandem
with existing solutions such as Picasa, and photo-editing
tools to give a complete solution to the user.
- Data Visualization & Information display
: Having
pooled the information efficiently, I would next to
present back to the user various exciting & creative
views of that same information. For example, the tags
or keywords attached to images might suggest new patterns;
or the possibilty of seeing an overview of all pictures
taken during the last 6 months, or choosing to see
them by project or zeroing in on all pictures for a
particular day. Or seeing all pictures sorted by user-group.
In short, playing with all the possible combinations
of data elements might yield very interesting & unforeseen
results.
- Richer communication: Facilitate
discussion
& communication around a project. Here I will explore
sharing of notes within user-groups, basic sketching
tools to make marks on the picture, & more.
