CS W4170 User Interface Design—Final Projects
Fall 2010

A key concept underlying Flickr and similar services is that photos are annotated with metadata, ranging from information about the photographer, location, and date, to lists of keyword tags and names of people in the photos.  The metadata associated with photos, combined with the relationships among the metadata items themselves, can make it possible to organize and explore the huge number of photos maintained by these services. But, what should a user interface for accessing photos through their metadata look like and how should it behave? In this project, design teams developed an answer to that question by building a Flex application that allows users to explore images using the Flickr API.  The applications took advantage of the methods that use the tags associated with photos and the relationships among tags. The applications also had to support the use of at least one of the following kinds of metadata: people, favorites, and galleries.

The following projects were presented at end of the semester.

	RandomPick.  RandomPick is a web application designed for users who are mostly interested in random picture browsing. It features related photo searching by the "tag" and "gallery" metadata, provided by the Flickr API. The main focus of this application lies in its ability to perform "linked content browsing". The user can view related pictures linked by relevant tag or gallery without losing track of how they got there, for the visiting history will always indicate the path and allow the user to jump back to any previously viewed content. RandomPick also provides features like photo detail view, slide show, and most interesting/recent galleries. With a concise and minimized design, RandomPick is an ideal tool for anybody who enjoys "PICK a theme and browse RANDOMLY". (Xueying Lu, Song Yang, Yigang Zhang, and Ziyi Zhang)
	Slickr.  Slickr is a Flickr image browser that allows users to search for photos using one or more keywords. Once the user selects a photo, they can iteratively browse photos with a related tag. Users of the application can view photos, as well as add and remove them from their favorites. (Ethan Hann, Jiaying Xu, Zack Sheppard, and Yufei Liu)
	Flicks-on-Flickr.  The application provides the user with the ability to access photos for the query entered. When the user searches for a query, a list of photos for the photo query is returned to the user. A set of related tags is also given to the user, with which he can conduct further searches. The user can iteratively access and view photos related to the photos that have been returned by pressing on the respective tags. The photos related to those tags are displayed in the main display window. A history of previous searches is also displayed to the user. The user can view the previous three searches he has conducted and is given the opttion to search for those queries again. The application also provides a list of photos belonging to all owners who were tagged in the images of the original search. The user then gets the option to search for images belonging to these users. (Astha Malik, Neerja Pancholi, Siddharth Patil, and Urvish Desai)
	Doodle.  Doodle is a Flickr photo browser that focuses on the relationship among different tags. The user can search based on tags, and get photo lists based on related tags. Slides view is also enabled to allow user have a better experience when browsing photos. The photo list can also be regrouped based on authors, so that the user has the ability to browse photos that are published by a single author. Our aim is to make browsing photos easier, but more efficient. (Haochen Liu, Haomin Zhu, Nan Luo and Tianchen Li)
	SweetPoses. SweetPoses is a simple photo views provided to Flickr users to search and iterate through Flickr database of photos. Using this tool, users can search via photo providers' usernames or photo tags. Users are given the freedom to iterate in Flickr through clicking on related tags to different photos. This tool has a simple design, but works well, especially for those interested in skimming photos in Flickr.
	FlickrGOLD. FlickrGOLD is an application designed to help senior citizens browse photos of their friends and family on Flickr, and perform searches of Flickr's entire collection of images.  Its interface includes senior-friendly features such as large font size and icons, limited use of text, geometric distortion, reduced typing and clicking, easily accessible Help documentation, minimalist design, and unified layout.  In Contact mode, users can limit their search to photos taken of and by their friends, relatives, and other contacts.  In Global mode, they can search for images in all of Flickr.  The user's contacts always remain on the screen, preventing older users from getting lost in the vastness of the Flickr collection. (Stefanie Weisman, Vikram Sunkavalli, Mikhail Aronov, and Alexander Golec)
	CommandLineInnovation.  This application is a tool intended to help a wide variety of users find very specific images. By using a unique search algorithm, users can use the tag browser to visually combine relevant tags to pare down results to a set of appropriate images. Further, when a user finds a image he/she likes, it can be saved onto the clipboard by dragging the image over the Clipboard region. Also, users can search all images by an author by dragging an image into the author region. (Carmine Elvezio, Manisha Bans, Stephen Chao, and Josh Mitchell)
	PandaPix. PandaPix is an application that encourages dynamic browsing of Flickr photos grouped by tag.  Also, it offers multiple levels of detail beginning with a minimal, intuitive interface that also affords users the ability to acquire more detail if desired.  Through our interface, a user can search either by a specific tag or start browsing immediately by clicking on one of our pre-determined suggested tags.  When browsing begins, a radial display of the tag in question, as well as its related tags, is shown. Through this interface, users can browse through thumbnails of photos associated with the main tag, click on a relevant tag to explore it, or click on a thumbnail to fetch more details on an image.  When a thumbnail is clicked, an Image Detail pane is opened, which provides more information on the image, its associated tags, and the owner's favorite photos,  as well as links to associated flickr.com pages for further exploration.  Our application also provides a Tag History tracking feature, which allows users to keep track of their browsing history and return to a previous tag if desired.  The application aims to provide streamlined tag relevancy browsing as well as providing users with multiple options to search for tags, encouraging freedom of usability and a fluid browsing experience. (Yi Yang, Yiwei Gu, Quan Yuan, Janessa Det)
	PhotoLinks. PhotoLinks is a tag-related explorer that will display the search results in a circular layout. The most related tag photos will be in the center of the circle, with up to eight related tag photos which form one friendly and pretty circle. By moving the mouse on the center photos, PhotoLinks will zoom in on the selected photos so that  the user can get a better view of the photos. The user can view the big photo with one simple click; it is also convenient for viewing photos by the same author. PhotoLinks is a simple, easy-to-use, but powerful, tag-related photo viewer. (Yilei Yang, Yifu Zheng, Peiti Li and Taotao Li )
	FlickrVis. The photo-sharing service Flickr hosts more than five billion images, and the vast majority of the service's users access these images through Flickr’s own web frontend at http://www.flickr.com.  This web frontend, however, is inadequate in certain important respects. Chief among these, it fails to provide an intuitive interface for exploring relations among tags associated with hosted images. This was one of the primary impetuses for the design of FlickrVis. With its Tag Graph interface, FlickrVis provides a simple and powerful means of visualizing and exploring relationships among tags associated with images hosted on Flickr. FlickrVis also provides intuitive tools for exploring relationships among people that appear in these photographs, and gives  the user transparent access to the metadata bound to photographs hosted on Flickr.
	FlickMeUp. FlickMeUp is a Flickr-based photo exploration application, in which users can explore and discover new images.  Users can enter a search term and view the resulting images.  What makes this different from other photo applications is that it suggests to the user what other pictures he might be interested in.  This may appeal to people with specific interests because they can explore pictures in fields that they find appealing.  In addition, if the user likes the photographer of a particular picture, FlickMeUp allows him to view other pictures posted by that same Flickr user. (Jesse Bentert, John Graham, Vaibhav Pendse, and Ketaki Kulkarni)