Polaroid snap touch | You're welcome

Polaroid

Snap Touch

Camera & printer

touch screen interface

Polaroid top

Polaroid snap touch 2-in-1is a small camera and printer with a 3.5" touch screen that can take pictures, record short clips, and print a 2x3" pictures.

The pictures and clips are saved on the camera or on the users' phone.

This camera was designed for a young audience, with many cool features like adding filters, emojis, stickers, captions, and timestamps, and more.

The project

Context

This project was very exciting for me. After years of designing for mobile and desktop, I finally met a new refreshing and challenging interface - 3.5 inch screen packed with features just like any app.

Goal

Designing the touch screen for the Polaroid snap touch camera and printer.

My role

User research
Competitive research
Product concept
UX design of the entire app
Working directly with the client

Research

First step

Every project starts with research. In order to design a product, I have to know every aspect of it, who will use this product, what are the client's business goals and who are the product competitors. In this project, I also needed to research the interface - how to design for a small screen.

I researched 2 aspects of the product.

1. Competitive research

This competitive research was a bit different than other similar researches I made before. This time the main goal was understanding how to design for a small screen. This challenge was even harder since I didn't receive the camera itself yet and couldn't see the screen with my own eyes.

I decided to review other cameras with a touchscreen and learn how they were designed, and specifically these:

Navigation design
The size of icons, text, and other objects
Screen layouts

Since I didn't have other cameras in my hands, I made online research - I chose a few leading cameras and learned their interface from the camera spec and video reviews.

I learned about the layout of the screens, how to work with the objects on it, and different options to design the navigation and the settings.

This is one of the cameras I researched. Its design elements helped me understand how to design for a small screen.

Nikon D5600

Advanced camera with a 3.2" touch screen.

The camera management is done on the touch screen.

Scroll bar

Back

Action menu

Settings

2. User research

This project didn't have a budget allocated for competitive research. However, I needed to make sure I understand who is the user, so I used a few hours of this budget for online research about the users of this product and created a persona.

Second step

Screen Map & Features

I had quite a few meetings with the client to learn all the features of the camera. The map helped me plan the navigation and the user flow for each use case.

Wireframes

Third step

Due to the size of the screen, it wasn't possible to have reliable user testing, therefore a budget wasn't allocated for that. Therefore, I skipped designing all the product screens.

I created a unique wireframe in the size and proportions of a 3.5" screen.

I designed all the screens of the app according to the screen map and the features, basing my decisions on the persona I defined.

The full UX design of the product

About my decision making

After the user took a picture, she can print it, save it, or delete it.

Usually, I give less affordance to the Delete button, but I found out that the user frequently deletes pictures because the camera's internal memory is not very big, and she takes many a lot of pictures.

When the user wants to add a caption she has the option to insert her own words or choose a preset text. I had to make a short research to make sure that there are keyboards fit to this size.

When the user chooses a button the letter pops out so she could see what she chose.

In the gallery, the user can choose several pictures at once. The available actions are printing, deleting, or create a collage. In this case, the printing option got more affordance for two reasons:

This really was the most used option
Business-wise, the printing papers were very beneficial.

Polaroid

Snap Touch

Camera & printer

touch screen interface

Polaroid snap touch 2-in-1is a small camera and printer with a 3.5" touch screen that can take pictures, record short clips, and print a 2x3" pictures.

The pictures and clips are saved on the camera or on the users' phone.

This camera was designed for a young audience, with many cool features like adding filters, emojis, stickers, captions, and timestamps, and more.

The project

Context

This project was very exciting for me. After years of designing for mobile and desktop, I finally met a new refreshing and challenging interface - 3.5 inch screen packed with features just like any app.

Goal

Designing the touch screen for the Polaroid snap touch camera and printer.

My role

User research

Competitive research

Product concept

UX design of the entire app

Working directly with the client

Research

First step

Every project starts with research. In order to design a product, I have to know every aspect of it, who will use this product, what are the client's business goals and who are the product competitors. In this project, I also needed to research the interface - how to design for a small screen.

​

I researched 2 aspects of the product.

​

1. Competitive research

This competitive research was a bit different than other similar researches I made before. This time the main goal was understanding how to design for a small screen. This challenge was even harder since I didn't receive the camera itself yet and couldn't see the screen with my own eyes.

​

I decided to review other cameras with a touchscreen and learn how they were designed, and specifically these:

Navigation design

The size of icons, text, and other objects

Screen layouts

​

Since I didn't have other cameras in my hands, I made online research - I chose a few leading cameras and learned their interface from the camera spec and video reviews.

I learned about the layout of the screens, how to work with the objects on it, and different options to design the navigation and the settings.

This is one of the cameras I researched. Its design elements helped me understand how to design for a small screen.

Nikon D5600

Advanced camera with a 3.2" touch screen.

The camera management is done on the touch screen.

Menu

Scroll bar

Back

Action menu

Settings

2. User research

This project didn't have a budget allocated for competitive research. However, I needed to make sure I understand who is the user, so I used a few hours of this budget for online research about the users of this product and created a persona.

Second step

Screen Map & Features

I had quite a few meetings with the client to learn all the features of the camera. The map helped me plan the navigation and the user flow for each use case.

Wireframes

Third step

Due to the size of the screen, it wasn't possible to have reliable user testing, therefore a budget wasn't allocated for that. Therefore, I skipped designing all the product screens.

I created a unique wireframe in the size and proportions of a 3.5" screen.

I designed all the screens of the app according to the screen map and the features, basing my decisions on the persona I defined.

The full UX design of the product

About my decision making

After the user took a picture, she can print it, save it, or delete it.

Usually, I give less affordance to the Delete button, but I found out that the user frequently deletes pictures because the camera's internal memory is not very big, and she takes many a lot of pictures.

When the user wants to add a caption she has the option to insert her own words or choose a preset text. I had to make a short research to make sure that there are keyboards fit to this size.

When the user chooses a button the letter pops out so she could see what she chose.

In the gallery, the user can choose several pictures at once. The available actions are printing, deleting, or create a collage. In this case, the printing option got more affordance for two reasons:

This really was the most used option

Business-wise, the printing papers were very beneficial.