Understanding photowork

Abstract

In this paper we introduce the notion of "photowork" as the activities people perform with their digital photos after capture but prior to end use such as sharing. Surprisingly, these processes of reviewing, downloading, organizing, editing, sorting and filing have received little attention in the literature yet they form the context for a large amount of the 'search' and 'browse' activities so commonly referred to in studies of digital photo software. Through a deeper understanding of photowork using field observation and interviews, we seek to highlight its significance as an interaction practice. At the same time, we discover how "search" as it is usually defined may have much less relevance than new ways of browsing for the design of new digital photo tools, in particular, browsing in support of the photowork activities we describe.

Uses and Gratifications of digital photo sharing on Facebook

“…A large portion of the previous research on digital photo sharing and related practices has been directed towards the development and testing of experimental prototypes and concepts (Kirk et al, 2006;Naaman, Nair, & Kaplun, 2008), aimed at facilitating and simplifying sharing of digital photos, management, navigation and browsing of large digital collections.…”

“…In recent years, personal photography has gained immense popularity and adoption (Goh, Ang, Chua, & Lee, 2009;Kirk, Sellen, Rother, & Wood, 2006;N. A.…”

Meerkat and Tuba: Design Alternatives for Randomness, Surprise and Serendipity in Reminiscing

“…Further reasons for collecting and keeping content, addressed in the work of Kirk et al [14] refer to the importance of maintaining link to one's history as a form of legacy and also to keep certain special people in honorium. Kirk et al [15] describe several practices people undertake with their photo collections prior to sharing it with others. Of interest to us specifically is how these practices shape and influence the possibilities for presenting and interacting with large digital collections.…”

“…Of interest to us specifically is how these practices shape and influence the possibilities for presenting and interacting with large digital collections. Of particular significance, as highlighted by Kirk et al [15], and in spite of research and design effort to facilitate viewing, browsing [11] and searching [12], people infrequently look back through, let alone search their collections. When they do, they are more likely to deal with recent content.…”

Flux: Enhancing Photo Organization through Interaction and Automation

“…This task is throughout the literature commonly referred to as filing (e.g., [9]) and relies on several other actions: The user has to be able to somehow sift through his collection to get an overview of the content and find certain objects. A purely search-driven approach is not feasible within the highly visual domain of photos, because finding a photo using text is only possible with meaningful keywords that have to be manually added by the user, a task that is only reluctantly performed, if at all ( [10]).…”