Photo curation practices on smartphones

Abstract

With camera-enabled phones always at hand, people tend to build large photo collections on these devices, which in turn creates the need of curating such collections. This paper describes a study of curation activities performed on smartphones aiming to identify design opportunities for applications that will help users manage and organize their photo collections. Semi-structured interviews with young adults show that curation on smartphones does not happen without external triggers and is an activity that they postpone and avoid as much as possible. The most usual trigger for curation activities is running out of storage space. Rather than specialized applications participants are content with camera roll applications that are built into their phones. They do not like how photographs are mixed in the camera roll, but value the overview, chronological order and serendipity it allows in viewing. Furthermore, they appreciate automated backup of their photo collections.