Page History

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This design was focused on efficiently letting the user browse large amounts of content.
It would be useful for normal browsing/ general searching purposes, but would also be inefficient for searching for a specific picture.
It revolves around a timeline that users can use to change the pictures displayed. Big events would be highlighted on the timeline giving them faster access to events in general.
Hovering the user's cursor would also allow the the frame of viewable pictures to shift to show newer or older pictures.

This design tries to make it fun for users to scroll through and find media. Items are displayed in varying sizes in a mosaic like form.
This yields some uncertainty as to where certain items are but it gives the user a fun and new way to browse files.
The search bar is there to find a specific picture or event, but the layout is meant for the user stumble upon desired content in the browsing process.
The design is not efficient for the user. The layout makes it fairly easy to learn how to use.

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This design allows the content to get to content strictly by searching.
The search results page not only displays relavant media, but it also displays potential people, albums, or events in a separate grouping. This gives the user easy access to the result type they wanted. It takes limited scrolling to find what you want in the results so it is efficient to get the result you want, and it only requires one page load.
Search autocomplete aids the user in searching for relavant things. The user can search by person, event, date, or filename.
The landing page also presents the user with recent activity in case the other parent recently did something they were trying to do.

The larger view allows users with poorer eyesight to navigate with ease. It also attempts to display things to the user in a friendly way.
The user will be less intimidated by the overly sized interface because they won't feel like they are missing something.
It sacrifices some efficiency by initially displaying media to the user one item at a time, however the option remains to see a grid like view of all the media.
The initial search for something can be made by person, event, or date. The calendar shows users which dates have files associated with them through color and mouse over pop ups.

This design tried to tackle the extreme case of having a tiny screen, perhaps on a mobile device.
The process of finding a specific picture is done by searching through a calendar layout.

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All manipulation is done through entering commands and hotkeys.
The command bar shows the current search query. Can use different keywords. A matching contents bar shows the pictures matching the query.
Hotkeys can copy links to images, then can be shared as the users wishes.

This design allows users to search for pictures, and it pulls up related ones as well.
It shows when devices have last been synced to the site, so users can have an idea of where the offline pictures they want might be.

This is the super-efficient design.
Intended when users want to find and share pictures as quickly as possible, it leads them right through the steps.
Their linear progression to the right in going through all steps communicates to them exactly what they need to do next.

This design offers two alternatives for a graphical layout indicating to the user pictures that have been recently added to the site, and with whom they are shared with.
The first approach uses more orderly rows, while the second attempts to use Venn diagrams in showing pictures that are shared with different groups.

Design Markups - Storyboards and Designs

Step 1

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Learnability
- Pros
  - Simple interface in terms of few buttons on home screen. This allows the users to know precisely what they can do.
  - Mosaic is catchy for the user. They are likely to hover over it with mouse, and learn more about its functionality.
- Cons
  - Some users might not understand the mosaic can move adding new pictures. Arrows try to convey this information.
Efficiency
- Pros
  - Showing random pictures at varying sizes allows users to process a lot of data at once. Clicking on picture can get them to related pictures.
- Cons
  - Overall process is geared towards browsing, which is inefficient if the user has a specific photo in mind.
Safety
- Pros
  - Users are processing a lot of data at once, but it takes a click to actually learn more, not just a simple hover.
  - Pressing escape or clicking outside scope of sharing/larger view window goes back to mosaic (easy to undo mistake)
- Cons
  - Pictures are close together for the mosaic and user could potentially click on wrong photo.

Step 1

User wants to find pictures of a birthday party.
The user logs on, and is able to see recently added/shared pictures from their spouse, as well as the state of devices that upload to the site.

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