Photo & Profile/Portfolio Page Designs | Fotoup Social Network Startup
Design of Main Content Pages of FOTOUP Network / Done in: 2011 to 2015
Photo & Profile/Portfolio Importance
Why these two pages are the most important contents of the network
Fotoup has some main functions and pages that are the fundamentals of the network. The photo pages and profile pages are the main pages with:
- The most functions implemented in them.
- They have the highest traffic flow from inside or outside the network.
- They receive the most input info from the users to be used in the scoring and ranking systems.
- They are the most referred/shared pages outside the network in other socials.
- They are what the users identify and showcase their artworks and roles in the artwork.
- They appear in many pages and are the main contents of those pages.
Here you can see the distribution of the photos vs wall-posts
And here how these pages contents are connected to other pages of the network.
Business and personal pages content contribution
There was another version of the profile page with limited access, made to represent businesses. I dont discuss it here because of its similar design to profile page design. Business pages are designed to serve businesses and photography associations or organizations. They can also contribute to the network contents but in different and limited ways.
One of the main aspects for business pages is referencing the photo rights or transfer it to someone else. Businesses can be mentioned as the rights owner or be added as a role like lighting expert.
They can contribute to walls and conversations but not the contest platforms.
Maybe the most useful aspect of business pages is the ability to represent a team and recruit for their next project.
What the users need and dont get satisfied with existing solutions
Based on our research we came up with some highlights of what our target users need and how we can attract them to fotoup.
1 Informative portfolio
Meaning that they want to be able to show and say and link as much as they can. But in a unified way that the input is comparable with other rivals and members.
2 Easy to be identified
So in different ways they could differentiate themselves like their focus, profession, role, skills, ranks, category and etc.
3 Be able to edit photo pages contents after upload
An issue with current solutions, the uploaded photos are not editable easily in many case has to be re-uploaded and that is also another problem to handle re-uploaded photos in the system data structure
4 A Kind of ranking system or metric or index score to be measured among other photographers
Artists are in constant battle to show off with their works to be able to get hired more. But art is not scored by numbers. Something we found out they want is a way to be able to go up in a list or ranking, a constant real-time updated ranking system. In facebook for example the popularity is often understood with the number of likes or shares.
5 Highlight my skills and my works to get noticed
Both in how the users are found or searched for and in how the users are categorized in the network the users want to be highlighted with their skills and specialties
The tagging system in fotoup, designed to tag users with their roles and main focus area in photo industry.
The Profile Page
The fotoup project covers a very divers but professionally focused target groups but the main target group for fotoup service and experience design is the photographers. As photographers especially pro photographers are the highest priority for user based fundamentals, the other groups like amateurs, models, businesses, artists, makeup artists, retouchers and some others were considered in the design process.
Profile page was mainly designed to the photographers needs but in a flexible way to get other professions interested and basically cover more than they need. User Tags were basically designed to differentiate the profiles but also in later developments to work as a profile template. Tags make every user role clear and what their main focus is. Every user could chose up to 3 tags to identify themselves.
The tags are not only made to emphasize on the skills but to keep the photo rights and show the level of ownership and tracing a photo, how and who has made it and designing ways to get in touch with the owner.
It also clears for the viewers that who did what in a photo that they saw shared in pinterest. And yes fotoup becomes a reference in photography like IMDB in movies industry.
Structure and Sections Of Portfolio
Sections
Later in this page you can read more about tagging system. But as mentioned earlier the tags which can be selected in signup process and in the setting, along other useful compact infos from the user are displayed in the profile header. The header went through a lot of changes in our design processes as it is a very complex and informative section. other than the tags and manual resume in the header all other ones are automatically updated based on the users activity and the activity on their contents.
Fotoup two ranking systems are basically a reflection of a scoring system in the whole network based on all the views, like, and recommendations a photographer and his/her photo gets. The quality ranking is reflective of our top 10% ranking users and the popularity ranking is reflective of the overall network feed backs.
Photo Page Structure and Sections
Photo pages are the most seen and highly traffic page that also has the most interactions and contributions to fotoup indexes and scoring metrics.
As its clear main object in photo page is the photo itself and stats and info about the uploader. the roles, rights, awards and so on.
In a photo page users can UP or FAV the photos, they can report them or comment on them, share them or have access to the photographer, rights owners, models and all the photo stats.
Fotoup Photo Rights
The main purpose of the designing the tagging system is reflected here very well in the project roles. Every photo uploaded in fotoup was automatically assigned to the uploaded as most of the times (at the time) photo up-loader was the photographer. Gradually with the rise of Instagram models are more frequently getting to upload the photos that they dont legally own but use to promote themselves with the photographer’s consent.
The design we had was mainly to solve the issue that even now exists in photo networks. We solved the rights ownership and how to represent in in a social network. Uploader is asked if they own the photo rights and if say no they are asked if they had a role and if the right owner is in the network so they can tag them. as you can see in the design.
