My article on sansmirror last week about declining digital camera sales in the UK had at the end a brief note about what the Mintel survey said people do with their photos. Just to remind you:
- 53% send by email
- 50% upload to social networks
- 35% just leave them on the camera or smartphone
So I picked up a camera sitting on my desk (Panasonic GF3) and mocked something up. Here's the screen capture:
That's an actual screen capture with just one little addition: the heart icon. Those blue/gray boxes on the right are touch screen icons, just touch them to do what their icon hints at.
So what happens if you touch the heart? Well, imagine that the camera has Bluetooth and/or WiFi inside and that it "just connects" when it finds something you've previously paired it with and immediately performs any queued up job. The heart button therefore leads to a menu that allows you to queue those jobs:
I've left some nice areas there for some help text and icons, so that the Japanese screen builders still have something to do ;~). (Extra credit: add Cloud option. Extra extra credit: make it work for groups of images) The things in brackets lead to a list of defined social networks or defined albums on the camera's card. (Technically, "Email" should probably be in brackets, too, but all first versions have bugs in them ;~).
That's it. I've just solved the problems of 138% of the UK camera users. Oh wait, statistics don't work that way, do they? Okay, I've helped some number of them between 53% and 100%. That would a signficant percentage above the 0% currently having their problems solved if I'm not mistaken.
For things that have been done at least once before, all those users' workflow on any image they're playing back becomes tap, tap, tap. Yeah, that simple. Simpler than a lot of smartphones, actually.
Yes, there's some plumbing that needs to be done: (1) you need to add the communicating hardware and its corresponding software drivers to the camera, plus handle the connection/disconnection sequences well; (2) you need to have a software interface for pairing the camera with your devices in the first place; and (3) email, social network, and album need an "Add..." option for new entities in the menus they bring up, and that will involve another screen or two where the user creates those new locations. But that's it. It really is a simple design task and a simple engineering task.
So the reason we don't have this is what?
Come on, chant it with me: Communicating, Programmable, Modular. Heck, today I'll be happy if you just chanted the first word.
But then there's our next story...