Dropbox’s Carousel Design Deconstructed (Part 1)
- By Chris Bank
- August 26th, 2014
- 0 Comments
Many of today’s hottest record companies, both vast and small, are increasingly regulating a judgment of a smallest viable product (MVP) as approach to iteratively learn about their business and rise their product ideas.
By focusing on an constituent set of core functionality and analogous facilities for product development, these companies can good launch and build on new products. While a concepts are comparatively easy to grasp, a many trade-offs deliberate and decisions finished in execution are occasionally easy and are mostly rarely debated.
This two-part series, looks into a product pattern routine of Dropbox’s Carousel and a product organisation during UXPin shares a approach of meditative about product design, possibly you’re in a meeting, whiteboarding, sketching, essay down requirements, or wireframing and prototyping.
Part 1 is about a core user, their needs and Dropbox’s business needs, and it breaks down existent print and video apps. Part 2 will cover Carousel’s primary requirements, a finish product, a opening and pivotal learnings given a launch.
The Carousel MVP
It’s been reported1, that Dropbox wants Carousel, a new mobile print and video gallery app, to be “the go-to place for people to store and entrance their digital photos [and videos],” to be a “one place for all your memories.” In effect, Carousel allows we to entrance all of your photos and videos stored in a Dropbox criticism on any device, unifying them in a singular interface that automatically sorts files by time and location.
More specifically, a app launched with several pivotal features:
- Backing up
It integrates directly with Dropbox’s record storage to save all photos and videos taken on your mobile phone. - Viewing
A cloud-based media gallery displays all of your photos and videos though holding adult internal storage on your phone. - Sharing
It offers many ways for we to share photos and videos with others, radically by promulgation links to perspective them in Carousel. - Discussing
A new discuss thread is combined for any organisation of people with whom we share a collection of cinema or videos.
2Since launching, Carousel has perceived polarizing reviews. Amidst this conflict of regard and underline requests, we’ll go over how any product or pattern organisation could arrive during a same initial recover — a vicious exercise, generally in a marketplace as swarming as a one for print apps. First, we’ll promulgate what Carousel is, afterwards mangle down partial of a pattern routine for this MVP, and afterwards examination a UI and UX to existent pattern patterns such as Apple’s Photos, Instagram, Google+, Camera+, Flickr, Facebook, Picturelife and Dropbox Photos itself.
You can be certain that a product team’s meetings sounded a small like this:
“Photos are hot.”
“People store a lot of photos on Dropbox.”
“So, let’s build a mobile gallery.”
“Want to transcribe Apple’s Photos though confederate it with Dropbox?”
“Sure, though we also need to transcribe Facebook Messenger given we’re social, too.”
“OK, pull some sketches, make some wireframes, emanate a final mockups and build a high-fidelity prototype.”
“Ready to boat to 275 million users?”
“Launch!”
Now that we have an thought of what Carousel is, let’s cruise how a organisation competence have left about conceptualizing a app.
Core Users
Carousel clearly targets consumers, both immature and old, rather than professionals or enterprises. No doubt about that. This is transparent from a interface and a visible pattern choices4, noted by a childish montage of dual personas, Nora and Owen (yes, they have names), who we see flourishing up.
5Users needs
A lot of decisions need to be finished here given a marketplace already has literally hundreds of apps for holding and handling photos. A few of a categorical use cases for these print apps are:
- taking photos (i.e. with a camera);
- editing photos (with filters or modernized editing);
- backing adult and syncing opposite devices;
- viewing;
- managing (tagging, arranging, moving, deletion or hiding);
- sharing (privately or publicly);
- discussing (privately or publicly).
Clearly, a lot of user needs could be met by a initial chronicle of a product. But where to start? Francine Lee, now a UX researcher during Dropbox, took an initial gash during responding this doubt with a guerilla usability test7 on Dropbox’s existent solution, Dropbox photos. I’m going to take her work a few stairs further.
Business Goals
In general, Dropbox cares about a expansion and monetization of a core business. This is what many companies, prohibited or not, caring about.
Specifically, a association wants to continue flourishing a altogether user bottom (whether those users come from a categorical Dropbox app or from Carousel), pushing new users to a categorical use of subsidy adult and syncing files, upselling them on incomparable plans, and gripping everybody as intent and happy as possible.
So, how does this overlie with users’ needs and, ultimately, with a resolution that needs to be designed and built?
Existing Design Patterns And Their Gaps
Let’s demeanour during applicable products and pattern patterns that prove both user and business needs, as good as brand any gaps that Carousel competence fill. If you’re meddlesome in training more, check out UXPin’s ebook Mobile UI Design Patterns8.
We’ll examination a few existent mobile print galleries and other pattern patterns to know given Dropbox’s Carousel looks so identical to Apple’s internal Photos app as good as Instagram’s direct-messaging feature, which, not coincidentally, is identical to Facebook’s Messenger app. Beyond a fact that Apple has finished it scarcely impossible9 for third-party developers to build a improved app, we trust that Dropbox has taken this trail for many reasons. And we have many impulse to take from Instagram.
Because Carousel targets a normal consumer, we’ll also demeanour during media-gallery applications that aim this user bottom with a clever mobile participation — after all, eyeballs and rendezvous are going in a instruction of mobile. As such, we didn’t demeanour as many into desktop and web-first apps such as iPhoto, Picasa and Unbound or into power-user applications.
Instead, we’ll concentration on Apple’s Photos, Instagram, Google+, Camera+, Flickr, Facebook, Picturelife and Dropbox Photos itself. In “The Best Photo Apps for Keeping Your Memories in a Cloud10,” The Verge analyzes existent solutions in abyss and validates a concentration on these forms of products in evaluating Carousel’s MVP.
11Given that Loom, a renouned print and video gallery app, was acquired by Dropbox14 within a week after Carousel launched and afterwards decommissioned a month after in May 2014, we did not embody it in this discussion. Everpix also recently went out of business15, so we can't discuss many about it either. To give we an thought of how rival this space is, Everpix was giving divided a giveaway two-year hearing customarily for downloading a desktop app, uploading some photos and joining it to a smartphone.
Taking Photos
Below are screenshots of Instagram, Apple’s Camera and Flickr.
They all yield roughly a same functionality (including filters), and all concede users to save copies of photos to their phone’s camera roll, that Dropbox already seamlessly backs adult and syncs to a cloud when users opt in. Users don’t need any some-more options for holding photos, so building this into Carousel’s initial functionality wouldn’t make clarity for Dropbox.
17Not customarily does a camera not go in Dropbox’s core user knowledge today, though it wouldn’t element a innumerable of other digital cameras out there. By not building camera functionality into Carousel, Dropbox both minimizes expansion risks and plays good with a infancy of a marketplace for capturing photos and videos, both apps and hardware alike. It customarily wants a pattern once you’ve taken it.
Editing: Filters and Advanced Editing
Below are screenshots of Apple’s Photos, Instagram and Camera+.
As we can see, you’ll also have to cruise a innumerable of photo- and video-editing options. Enough reasonable solutions seem to be on a market. Again, many of these products concede users to save strange and edited copies to their phone’s camera roll, that Dropbox already seamlessly backs adult and syncs to a cloud when users opt in.
19Because capturing and modifying photos are customarily a partial of a same workflow, Dropbox has a same reason for not providing this in a initial chronicle of Carousel: It customarily wants a pattern once you’ve taken it. In further to this reason, users also theoretically can't revise photos until they store them on Dropbox. Because one of Dropbox’s primary objectives with Carousel is to boost a array of photos that new and existent users store on Dropbox, what users do afterward is reduction critical and is potentially a daze from saving all of their photos and relocating on.
Backing Up and Syncing
Below are screenshots of Google+, Apple’s Photos, Facebook, Dropbox and Carousel.
Unfortunately, many camera and photo-editing apps still need users to save photos to a camera hurl before subsidy adult and syncing. This multi-step routine of safely subsidy adult photos and videos and afterwards clearing a camera hurl to save space is not customarily time-consuming when finished during a final minute, though also stressful given there is always a worry that something hasn’t synced properly. Beyond a intensity for alleviation in restraining together a processes of capturing and subsidy adult media, tide cloud solutions have some additional pattern problems.
On iOS, separating a choice to behind adult a camera hurl from a choice to upload new photos to a print tide opposite all inclination could be confusing. In fact, we still hardly know a difference. Google+ also confuses this knowledge given users competence assume they can revise these settings in Google Drive, that they can’t. Google radically army users to share images on a publicly lopsided amicable media website, Google+, with no clarity on a remoteness settings for this content. While Google+ does offer auto-enhance and “Auto Awesome” — whatever that means — users competence go over their information boundary or their phone’s battery competence die from uploading so many videos or photos over mobile data.
Facebook, on a other hand, has schooled a doctrine here and clearly creates media syncing private until a user does something. It also provides some granularity in a settings so that users can sync in a credentials with assent of mind. And users have a transparent choice to use Facebook for cloud storage, like Dropbox — obviously, Dropbox is meddlesome in enabling this by default given this is a core business and product value, graphic Facebook.
21Dropbox takes caring of these use cases elegantly and, as we’ll see, has totally migrated these settings for photos over to Carousel so that users can get to a right place even if they try to revise these settings in Dropbox’s categorical app.
23Viewing
Below are screenshots of Apple’s Photos, Facebook, Instagram and Picturelife.
At a elementary level, these apps all benefaction photos and videos according to a time and plcae in that they were shot (sometimes even a building) and in groups and in lengthened particular views. However, this can get treacherous when users toggle between views, generally in Apple’s Photos, that has albums, collections and moments, with small or no visible evidence of how they describe to any other or what they even meant in a initial place — I, for one, still have no idea. This becomes increasingly cryptic when users undo photos from their camera hurl intermittently to save storage space, given there isn’t an easy approach to perspective backed-up media in iCloud.
25Facebook is a many easier resolution but, like many cloud-based galleries, has issues with loading speed when a user scrolls fast given it’s not a internal app. Also, accessing these photos is not as elementary as it should be — photos are still a delegate experience. On other other hand, Instagram is a photo-first app, though a observation functionality is singular and intensely cluttered by ancillary information (likes, comments, timestamps, etc.).
27
29Compared to a alternatives, Picturelife stands detached with a perfect extent of options for observation a media not customarily in your phone’s camera hurl though in 10 renouned galleries and amicable networks, including Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, Shutterfly, Smugmug, Tumblr and Twitter. Switch simply between timeline, places, faces, memories, favorites, screenshots and albums. Within any album, arrange by manuscript name, date taken, date modified, date combined or array of pictures. Most importantly, users can use free-form hunt to find what they’re looking for.
The primary obstacle to so many options is that removing mislaid in a innumerable of photos you’ve taken is easy. Moreover, by syncing so many galleries and networks, many of that have reposted images, users will expected see many duplicates. Nevertheless, this product substantially enables we to find any pattern some-more fast than any other resolution to date.
31Managing
Below are screenshots of Apple’s Photos, Facebook and Picturelife.
This is where many media galleries and camera apps diverge. Management workflows (tagging, arranging, moving, deleting, hiding) are impossibly diverse, and any app seems to prioritize a possess variation. At a elementary level, many apps capacitate users to pierce media between folders, to use a preset observation filter to stay orderly automatically and to undo photos. These actions can typically be finished during a turn of picture, comparison organisation or album. However, apps change widely in how they capacitate users to censor media, transcribe media, save copies and originals, trade to other applications, comment, change meta data, unduplicate, and even couple media galleries and amicable networks.
Apple’s Photos, for instance, enables users to simply name one or some-more media files and pierce them between albums or undo them. Likewise, whole albums might be deleted. And a subset of Apple’s print tide can sync locally, and third-party apps might store copies in Photos as well. However, we can’t conduct these accounts from Photos directly. Any other modernized functionality for handling media doesn’t exist. It’s flattering basic.
33Facebook provides identical functionality. However, somewhat some-more can be finished on a mobile phone, including tagging people, fondness media files, and observation all cloud-stored album-organized media that embody tags of a user or that are synced from a phone. While a knowledge of observation all synced media in a mobile app is sluggish, a user during slightest isn’t singular to a internal storage on their mobile device. In any case, Facebook is still a singular solution.
35Picturelife, by contrast, seems to have it all. Users can possibly reason and reason an pattern to see resizing options around drag-and-drop gestures or use a customary straight menu to favorite photos, supplement them to albums, hide, delete, criticism and more. The coherence of a observation options creates handling photos and videos effortless. However, a vast obstacle is that users can’t name mixed images to supplement them to a new manuscript or to pierce them.
37Sharing (Private and Public)
Below are screenshots of Google+, Apple’s Photos and Picturelife.
Sharing a singular square or a organisation of media publicly is baked into any print and video focus we looked at. Whether they share directly from their print gallery of choice or save to their camera hurl in sequence to share after on another platform, users have options. That being said, how users add, mislay and perspective media before sharing, how they rivet with it once shared, where accurately they might share and how they supplement and mislay people to share with change widely. More importantly, in new years certain applications give users a choice to share media secretly with a name assembly — a common activity in discuss and email clients.
Google+ is designed rather good to let users switch seamlessly between pity a singular photo, a preference of photos or an whole album, possibly by Google+ itself or by saving directly to a phone’s camera roll. However, users will be pity photos on Google’s network with “public” recipients as a default. If they wish to send to particular recipients, they get a really singular subset of contacts to corkscrew by — and customarily within Google’s network — or a hunt box or preorganized list of contacts, that expected isn’t updated or scrupulously maintained, generally compared to Facebook’s intelligent lists. Facebook is identical to Google in that it radically lets we share media publicly with varying degrees of privacy. While Facebook Messenger’s formation of a camera hurl into a private chatting knowledge is nice, users have no genuine approach to send photos from a Facebook manuscript directly to a private assembly in chat.
39Apple offers distant larger coherence with pity on roughly any amicable network, as good as by SMS and email. However, users get small assistance with selecting recipients and no additional classification of this pity history, generally if they’ve ever common opposite some-more than one channel. Users are also generally forced to share media publicly on amicable websites though can share secretly by some-more traditionally private channels such as SMS and email.
41Picturelife, on a other hand, provides transparent coherence in promulgation media to a chairman or organisation by a phone’s residence book or posting to one or some-more renouned amicable networks. Each choice is emphasized equally, so a user can confirm how they wish to share their photos and videos. Oddly adequate for a mobile solution, a approach of selecting contacts is intensely indolent and seems to customarily offer email options and no SMS option.
43Discussing (Private and Public)
Below are screenshots of Apple’s Photos, Facebook and Instagram.
While all of a stipulations on posting publicly are due to a pity stipulations mentioned above, a designs to support private contention are rather graphic from a designs for open contention and seem to change widely formed on a product’s priorities.
For example, on iOS, users can share mixed photos during once and embody anyone in their residence book (which is customarily anyone with an email residence or phone number), though they can’t supplement some-more people to a review on a fly or respond to a subset of recipients in a apart review or perspective their full media story in a combined arrangement (because photos and videos are kept separate).
45Meanwhile, Facebook allows users to supplement new recipients, effectively formulating a new chat. Additionally, Facebook some-more clearly displays a several ways users can promulgate with recipients, not customarily by text, print and video, though with audio and emojis; and a choice to select an existent print or video or emanate a new one is apparent during a glance. However, users can customarily discuss with people they’re connected with on Facebook, not anyone in their residence book.
47Instagram, on a other hand, creates it really easy to switch between private and open discussions. When users post to their supporters to have a open discussion, they can also post to renouned websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr to continue a review there. Alternatively, they can send a approach summary to anyone they’re connected with on Instagram. Again, they’re singular to a amicable network itself, though this is a thespian alleviation over many of a amicable alternatives.
49Time To Focus And Design Carousel
Now that we entirely know Carousel’s core users, their ubiquitous needs, Dropbox’s business needs and what exists on a market, it’s time to get something done.
In partial 2 of this series, we’ll fact a product’s primary requirements, promulgate Carousel’s state during launch and a opening in a market, and prominence pivotal learnings given a launch. Hopefully, this will assistance we to pattern your possess MVP, however we like to do that — with whiteboards, sketches, Balsamiq, Photoshop, UXPin or something else.
(al, ml, il)
Footnotes
- 1 http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/09/dropbox-debuts-carousel-aiming-to-be-the-go-to-storage-app-for-your-entire-photo-archive/
- 2 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/02-carousel-opt.jpg
- 3 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/02-carousel-opt.jpg
- 4 http://byalicelee.com/carousel/
- 5 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/03-carousel-core-use-opt.jpg
- 6 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/03-carousel-core-use-opt.jpg
- 7 https://medium.com/@___fl/a-guerilla-usability-test-on-dropbox-photos-e6a1e37028b4
- 8 http://uxpin.com/mobile-design-patterns.html
- 9 http://lifehacker.com/5814341/the-best-photo-management-app-for-iphone
- 10 http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4560364/best-cloud-storage-photo-apps
- 11 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/05-app-comparison-opt.jpg
- 12 http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4560364/best-cloud-storage-photo-apps
- 13 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/05-app-comparison-opt.jpg
- 14 https://blog.loom.com/loom-is-joining-dropbox-2/
- 15 http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death-inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup
- 16 https://loom.com/
- 17 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/07-instagram-apple-flickr-apps-opt.jpg
- 18 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/07-instagram-apple-flickr-apps-opt.jpg
- 19 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/08-apple-instagram-cameraplus-apps-opt.jpg
- 20 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/08-apple-instagram-cameraplus-apps-opt.jpg
- 21 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/09-googleplus-apple-facebook-apps-opt.jpg
- 22 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/09-googleplus-apple-facebook-apps-opt.jpg
- 23 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/10-dropbox-carousel-opt.jpg
- 24 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/10-dropbox-carousel-opt.jpg
- 25 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/11-apple-photo-app-opt.jpg
- 26 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/11-apple-photo-app-opt.jpg
- 27 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/12-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 28 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/12-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 29 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/13-instagram-app-opt.jpg
- 30 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/13-instagram-app-opt.jpg
- 31 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/14-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 32 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/14-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 33 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/15-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 34 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/15-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 35 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/16-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 36 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/16-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 37 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/17-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 38 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/17-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 39 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/18-googleplus-app-opt.jpg
- 40 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/18-googleplus-app-opt.jpg
- 41 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/19-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 42 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/19-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 43 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/20-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 44 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/20-picturelife-app-opt.jpg
- 45 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/21-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 46 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/21-apple-app-opt.jpg
- 47 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/22-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 48 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/22-facebook-app-opt.jpg
- 49 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/23-instagram-app-opt.jpg
- 50 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/23-instagram-app-opt.jpg
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Dropbox’s Carousel Design Deconstructed (Part 1)
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