CS 147 - Education Studio Assignment 2: POVs and Experience Prototypes Introduction Team members: Jiaxi C., Zhangyuan W., Jia Y., Ziran Z. Problem domain Our problem domain is photography education. We categorized stakeholders of photography education into three groups: amateur photographers, professional photographers, and instructors of photography. We had talked to at least one person from each category to gain a broad perspective of our problem domain. Initial POV We met Susan, a tourist from China. We were amazed to realize that she doesn’t know how a good photo should look and simply follows her feeling when taking photos. It would be game-changing to provide her guidance on judging the photos she took. Additional needfinding results In our initial round of needfinding, we interviewed mostly amateur photographers, like Susan, who take a lot of photos but are not really enthusiastic about learning photography. So in order to identify current gaps in the learning experience of photography, we decided to interview people who have experience with photography, both from the learner’s perspective and from the instructor’s perspective, in the our additional needfinding. To learn from the perspective of the young generation of photographers, we interviewed Philip Yan, who is studying at University of Pennsylvania and is a part-time photographer. Philip told us that his photography learning journey started with finding more experienced photographers, going out to take photos with them, and asking them to review his works. Philip emphasized the importance of peer learning in photography. Philip also shared his opinion on professional photography versus mobile photography. He mentioned that professional camera has many parameters like ISO, shutter time, and aperture, which make professional photography difficult to learn. In contrast, mobile photography puts emphasis on composition and theme, since the previously mentioned parameters are auto-adjusted by the phone. Also, mobile phone is more portable, so it is both easy to learn and more convenient to practice with.

Next, we interviewed Professor Sarah Peck who is currently teaching Cell Phone Photography at Stanford University and hence is a representative of the instructors category.

Sarah said a teaching challenge for her is that she has to learn all types of cell phones students use. She also said, “Student who never thought about being an artist became interested when echoed with artwork.” Sarah told us a story of how she introduced to her students a photographer named Nina Katchadourian, who took a series of artwork on the airplane seat. Her students were surprised to realize that artworks can come from such small things in people’s life. To conclude, we learned from Philip that peer learning from experienced photographer is a great way to make progress in learning photography. Mobile photography is more convenient to learn compared with professional photography. We also found that we can help people formulate their own ideas similar to how Sarah inspired her students. Revised POVs and HMWs POV 1: We met Tony, a professional photographer for 7 years. We were amazed to realize that he spent long time reading books, attending courses and clubs as well as practicing taking photos in order to learn. It would be game changing to make it easier for people nowadays to learn as much. Sample HMWs:

● HMW make practicing like a game ● HMW make the learning materials more accessible ● HMW transform learning into digital and interactive experience ● HMW give people critiques without attending a course

POV 2: We met Sue, an amteur cell phone photographer and Instagram user. We were amazed to realize that work from famous photographers can inspire ordinary users, but most people won’t turn the ideas into their own images. It would be game changing to let general phone users experience great images like professionals. Sample HMWs:

● HMW leverage the free time of professionals to give advice to general phone users ● HMW allow people to mimic professional shots ● HMW explain photographers’ techniques in a simple way ● HMW let professionals give assignment to their followers

POV 3: We met Sarah, an instructor of cell phone photography. We were amazed to realize that forming one’s ideas can be more difficult than technically achieving it. It would be game changing to encourage people to formulate their ideas. Sample HMWs:

● HMW help people improve their own ideas ● HMW make people more confident about their ideas ● HMW encourage people to observe daily life to form ideas ● HMW help people draw inspirations from the artworks of others

From all the HMW statements, we chose the following three to work out in more detail:

1. HMW transform learning into digital and interactive experience (from POV 1) 2. HMW allow people to mimic professional shots (from POV 2) 3. HMW encourage people to observe daily life to form ideas (from POV3)

After brainstorming solutions for these chosen HMW statements, our best solutions are:

1. Adding functions to camera app that give hints about photo taking (inspired by HMW 1)

2. Showing professional works and their stories (i.e., where, when, and how they were taken) based on user preference, trend, and location (inspired by HMW 2)

3. Assigning unusual tasks to help users form ideas (inspired by HMW 3) Experience Prototypes Prototype 1: Our first prototype is Intelligent Photography Coach, a built-in function of camera app that gives instructions and evaluations when users are taking photos. We wrote instructions in index cards that tell people to move left, step back, or try a warm filter. We also wrote a “related images” representing a feature that shows users professional photos similar to the photo they just took, and a score out of 100. This experience prototype would test our assumptions that people find information like the ones we wrote useful and that people may feel uncomfortable when being ordered.

In the testing phase, we asked Sophie, a French tourist, to use her mobile phone to take a photo of memorial court. When she composed the image, we used index cards to give her appropriate advices. After she took the photo, we showed her the score card and the “related image” card to see if she has interest in seeing similar photos.

Sophie gave us positive feeback and said that she would follow our advices to take a photo if the advices clearly help her produce a better image. However, Sophie also mentioned that people from different cultures have different perspective on score. For example, some people consider 95 out of 100 a very high compliment, while other people may consider it as an intermediate praise. Lastly, Sophie suggested that it would be great if the application records all of her past scores so that she knows if she is making progress. Prototype 2: The second prototype is Best Spot, a location-based map application that recommends the good nearby spots to take photos. For each spot, it provides some highly-rated photos taken by professional photographers on Instagram. Using this prototype, we wanted to test our assumption that people are interested in going to good spots and mimicking professional photos taken there.

We prepared a Stanford Campus map. Then we looked for some good photos on Instagram and marked the locations of the photos being taken on our map. We would first show our participants the map and asked them to randomly point to a mark on the map. Then we would show them the corresponding photos on our phone and ask them if they would like to go there and take a similar photo.

We tested this prototype with young tourist Michael in front of Stanford Memorial Church. When being asked if he will be attracted to the spots on map after he sees good photos taken there, he answered yes. However, when we asked him if he is planning to go to somewhere else, would he use this app to check good spots to take photos and plan traveling routes based on it, he said that he is not a professional photographer therefore he prefers to randomly walk around and take photos.

To conclude, this prototype can attract people to good spots if these places are easy to reach. However, these good spots are not attractive enough for amateurs to plan ahead to take a visit there. Prototype 3: Our third prototype is a small selection of simple tasks which will give users ideas for their photo shoot. We wrote the following tasks on index cards: “Take one image per day for one week”, “Find asymmetry in your life”, and “Produce 9 images to tell a story”. For the last task, we also provided an example of a storytelling photo sequence.

Our assumptions are that users actually want to complete tasks related to taking photos. In the testing phase, we simply presented these index cards to our participant and observed his reactions.

Our participant, a Stanford alumni, was taking photos for his wife when we noticed him. We asked him to read our index cards and speak freely about he thinks of them. He said the tasks are interesting but also can be more specific. He suggested that it would be better if the task “Take one image per day for one week” has a certain theme such as taking photos of dogs or taking photos of the same object. When being asked if he would actually do these tasks, he also responded yes. In the end, he mentioned that he likes the task “Produce 9 images to tell a story” the most because the storytelling aspect resonates with him. From his reactions, we conclude that people are generally acceptable of been giving tasks as long as they find the tasks interesting. Most Successful Prototype Among all three prototypes listed above, we believe that the prototype 3, giving users a small selection of simple tasks, is the most successful one. As the result of our prototype testing experience, we found that the users are willing to be assigned tasks related to take pictures if the tasks are interesting enough. To make our tasks interesting, we could create a large set of dataset and conduct research on them to see which kind of tasks people would accept the most. For the prototype 1, the users found providing some tips while they are shooting photos are helpful only if they believe they would take better pictures all the time following the instruction. We found giving users the correct instruction under all possible photoshooting circumstances is hard to achieve technically. For the prototype 2, recommending best spots nearby for users to take photos are not attractive to most of amateur photographers.