Face Recognition

2006

Project Description

Tagging was one of the hottest topics in the years 2006 and 2007. Among IA professionals, there was discussion about the future of classification systems. Pictures organization and face recognition were seen as being among the "benefits" of tagging. At the time, our AOL Lab had the knowledge and technology to create a face recognition system. We attempted to incorporate this technology into the picture organizing experience of AOL Pictures.

Contribution

I was given the direction and flexibility to explore freely to try to integrate face recognition technology in to the AOL Pictures experience, and there were very few limitations in terms of incorporating this into the UI. I got to use all the creative juice inside of me to create the entire flow from uploading pictures, to auto/manual tagging, to retrieving pictures using tags. With the encouragement of my manager, I designed the flow as well as led paper usability testing sessions before we ultimately created an electronic prototype.

  • Face Recognition:
      

      

      

Learned

I've read about the power of early usability testing, however, previous to this we never included enough time for it once the design phase was kicked off. However, for this project, I got to experience multiple iterations of testing throughout the design cycle.

Highlights

  • "Face recognition is my favorite project ever." That's what my answer is when I am asked what my favorite project as a designer has been. Unfortunately, this is the first project that I worked on that eventually became shelved. I am looking forward to someday seeing it resurrected.
  • Despite the fact that this project never passed the initial development stage, I still learned a considerable amount. I realized that working on a pictures / media application is one of my passions.
  • I also learned that I really love UI design! Out of all the early concepts that I designed, I liked the manual tagging UI especially; it was similar to Facebook's model for picture tagging (but better, if I may say so). Ultimately for me, the idea didn't just end up sitting on the shelf completely.
  • I also devoted my masters project to it, "how parents of young children organize and share their pictures?"

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