LiveAlbum

LiveAlbum helps families capture, manage, store, share, and retrieve family mementos related to children's activities. It is accessible through a number of devices such as a digital wall, mobile phone or picture frame. Through embracing and empowering the family members who are living together and connecting them with those that are temporarily or permanently away, LiveAlbum builds trust, belonging, and togetherness.

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Research and design process

We conducted interviews with families in greater Pittsburgh area and recognized an opportunity with respect to our project focus: helping parents archive artifacts/mementos. More specifically, our research unveiled five major needs for families in the process of archiving:

1. Filtering, organization, & tagging meaning to mementos
2. Cuing and reactivating mementos into everyday life
3. Share mementos with extended family and friends
4. Visualize progress and development of kids
5. Validate the efforts of the parents (for performing a rather thankless job)

Based on the needs we observed in the research phase of this project, we generated over fifty different concepts that then led to thirteen concepts. These concepts would then be presented to each family in order to validate the needs — with each validation session, the concepts evolved and improved based on feedback received. We found the cartoon format to be extremely engaging with all the families, with most of the cartoons evoking clear strong positive or negative feedback but always seeding discussion.

After validating the needs of our families, we began to refine our concepts and develop a script for the video sketch, which would provide our audience with a better idea of the interaction with the product. Our script went through about ten iterations, of which four had changes that were significant enough to document. The script was revised based on feedback received in our critiquing sessions. Because our script was ironed out early in the design process, we were able to design the user interface screens more efficiently because we all agreed on what features were needed for interaction.

My role

In a team of three, we all worked together on the initial research and generation stages of the project, interviewing users, generating concepts and validating them again with users as a team. In later stages of the project, I was responsible for audio and video production, including script and dialog editing, foley editing, voiceover and dialog recording, and final compositing and sequencing.