Redesigning Gallery's Image Upload Tools
Project Opening 2
Gallery is a web based software product that lets you manage your photos on your own website. With Gallery you can easily create and maintain albums of photos via an intuitive interface. Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning, searching and more. Albums and photos can have view, edit, delete and other permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy.
Gallery is likely installed on millions of websites and is downloaded 4000 times a day.
The Project: Expert benchmark analysis and interface design
Even though Gallery has many ways to upload photos, all of them are somewhat confusing for new users! Sites like Flickr and Facebook have come up with great interfaces for uploading images that are easy to use, and it's time to completely revamp our upload process.
For this project, you will conduct an expert benchmark analysis of 3 'competitor' upload interfaces like Flickr and Facebook, as well as two of the Gallery upload interfaces: the form based upload, and the upload applet. Based on your findings, you will make design suggestions for a completely new upload interface and validate them in a mini usability study with a mocked up interface.
Successful completion of this project will lead to your interface being implemented by our development team, included in the next release of Gallery, and hundreds of thousands of people will use it to upload their photos to their websites!
The Mentors:
Katrin Goetzer of Berlin-based Usability company Relevantive, and Chris Kelly, the project manager of Gallery, will work with you in your evaluation and design, making sure that the end product is something we can implement, and hopefully heighten your interest working with usability and Gallery.
Your Qualification:
This project requires experience in interface and interaction design as well as some experience in usability analysis methods. This is meant to be a learning experience, so don't worry as long as you understand the basics in design and usability. No specific software development background is needed, but hopefully you are someone interested in digital media that has uploaded a picture or two before!
Your Application:
- Apply for this opening by sending your application including a short CV and why you chose Gallery to students at openusability org.
- Application Deadline: 2008, April 14
- Project Timeframe: 2008 May - July/August
