When it came to the development of my concept, I still wanted to take inspiration from my research into sensory photography so that’s why I decided to incorporate holding the camera against the body. I felt this could be a unique feature for the app and would help it stand out more.
I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted the user to hold the phone to either their head or chest. I tried performing the motions of what each option would involve in order to get an idea of how it would feel for the user and eventually decided to go with the chest motion. I felt this was more natural for me to perform and since I want my app to be easily and quickly accessible, I felt the chest was the better option.
I wanted to use this app as a means of escape from the modern social media meta of heavily edited footage and images so that people could experience the content at its purest. Particularly in nature it would enable people to see the world as it is, completely unfiltered.
When trying to think of ways to do this I had the idea of having the app immediately upload the footage to the users account after the device had finished recording. This would make the process of sharing footage with others more immediate for the user, as well as eliminating any chance of the footage being altered in anyway.
I decided I wanted my app to have a very minimalistic UI and overall aesthetic. I took inspiration from the way code is laid out on a screen when coming up with how my UI would look. I initially didn’t have any kind of photos or colour and instead chose to strip the UI back to the essentials.
After reviewing this style, I decided against it. I felt that this type of aesthetic may become annoying for the user as most of the pages would look very similar and make the app hard to navigate.
Taking inspiration from apps like ‘Instagram’ and ‘Snapchat’ I wanted the app to incorporate a social media function as well, so that users could share their footage with others. When footage is uploaded it is sent straight to a user’s feed, where others can view the latest posts for a limited amount of time.
I wanted users to be encouraged to visit the locations their peers may include on their profiles so I wanted emphasis on the location the footage was taken at. To achieve this I had the idea of including the location as the main bit of information you see when viewing other users feeds.
I also had the idea of the app broadcasting live footage when held to the chest, this would add to the idea of reconnecting people with nature as they are getting a live first-person account of what the other user is experiencing.
I decided to stay loosely with the idea of code but incorporated some other graphical elements to help distinguish between the pages. This included using images on the profile pages and adding colour to help break up the layout. I added hierarchy to the typeface by including variations in the font weight and opacity to help certain information standout on the screen. This included things like usernames and alerts to recent uploads.
I developed a brand name and identity for my app, I decided to go with ‘raw_’ because I felt it perfectly described what the message behind the app was. It’s about the idea of footage being untouched and unedited, so I needed the perfect name which portrayed this message. It also relates to the idea of raw footage from a camera.
I also developed my experience prototype. I did this using a software called Adobe XD, this allowed me to make a basic mock-up of how my UI might work using the interface I had designed. As part of this, I also shot an external video to show how a user may use the recording function for my app.