Evaluation ‘LayerMix’

Looking back through my work on the LayerMix website idea I feel this is quite an innovative website design for galleries to have.  There is not a lot of information I found that I could directly relate or compare my ideas to.  The idea of having automatic photo recognition and automatic texture recognition is only really just coming into the light (technology wise).  The ideas are there but it has not be made or shown to have been made in the way I wanted to develop LayerMix.

The approach I undertook worked for the way I wanted it to but on occasions I did get myself confused and would have to take a step back and look at the design process again to understand where I was on the site.  This was due to the variety I was trying to explain in the timeframe we had.  Some of the time nearer the beginning of the coursework I felt I was drifting away from developing a piece of work for an art gallery instead of just a website and would have to stop again and try to get back towards an art gallery goal.

A potential improvement or a way to make the system easier would be to take out the automatic recognition part and just have users select what they want from each image and then if placed onto a canvas they would merge into a picture.  You could even take out the automatic merge function but then this site would just be like any other image editing site and would not gain an advantage over them.

The website has a lot of detailed functions and if I had more time I would have developed each section (such as the forum or tutorials) but I tried to concentrate on what this website is about.  ‘Creating and sharing images by mixing and matching other images in either a fully automatic or semi-automatic way’.  Because of the complex nature of the links in the site I would have liked to develop a better storyboard but am happy with the one I produced in showing how to edit a picture.

With a bit more work and a bit more research and development into the field of image and texture recognition then I feel this proposal could possibly be implemented (with a lot more detail on each section as well).  Time will be a key issue if it ever gets done.

The only information I am unsure on is how clear I am putting across my ideas, and are these understandable.

The Actual Gallery of Art

A major part of this website is going to be the actual storage and displaying of art through galleries.  The galleries will be broken down into three sections.

1.  A users personal gallery with there own personal images on, this can be broken down into sub-categories as the user pleases and can upload images into this for sorting.

2.  Other users galleries which show images they are happy for other users to see with a special link on images that other users have allowed to be taken and modified if needed.

3.  The stock gallery which will contain all of the art galleries work, which they want to display.  Again these can be for sale or just for show.

In order for these galleries to be successful there needs to be a very good way of displaying the data, this could be done through the use of a fish eye menu that allows you to see many galleries with a sub-set of images at once

The galleries can also bee seen in large igons on the screen which will have the most used galleries and also the top images within that gallery.  From there the user can go further into the gallery and images will then be able to view these images full screen.  All information about the image will be below it such as if it has been modified, its available for sharing or just viewing, its size.  It can even have a link on it where users can comment if required.

See below for a mock-up page of a user’s gallery website.

Storyboarding and pages

I have put together some pages showing the process visually of how a user can edit a picture.  Obviuosly the story board for the whole website is going to be massive with links and pages going off all over the place but below is a simple version with parts explained as it goes through.

1. The user logs into there personal home page and will proceed to click on the edit image option on the far left.

2.  This will then take the user to a page where they will have to select how and what images they are going to use for the image creation. They can enter there own gallery, other peoples, upload images or select from the art galleries stock photo collection. 

3.  A user has selected there own gallery where they can view all of their galleries in detail from the fish eye menu or select from the most popular galleries.  Once there they can go into the gallery on the same page and select individual images.

4.  For this example a user selects 3 images but in theory a user can select as many as possible.

The user can either select okay which will then tell the system to automatically generate the images with number 1 being the background and individual parts being placed into the new image.

5.  The new image is then produced from the previous 3 images.  This is automatically worked out and is going to take a very sophisticated sytem to work out what will go where and more than likely most of the time it is going to be a jumbled mess but could be interesting.

If the user is happy with the image they can then save it to there gallery for keeping.  At which point they should be asked if they want to share this image or keep it private.  The image is not set, this can be edited with each part that has been put onto the picture being a different layer, therefore making it easy to manipulate the photos.  Or a user can enter the image into a competition where they will be able to select a category for entry and monitor it from there home page.

With actual development and creation of this site further story boards will be produced but this gives a good view of the main function of the website.

Style Sheet for all pages

Below is the standard style sheet for all the pages on LayerMix.  This will give it a smooth and consitent feel to the website.  The bar going down the right hand side might need adjusting or removed on certain aspects as this can become in the way and might make certain areas hard to see.

As can be seen access to all areas is on the right hand side of the screen.  This can be styalized a bit better over time to give it that more 2.0 feel.  The only thing that will be added on some pages will be pictures in the top right corner that could be animated to give an interactive feel to some pages.

Budget

This is my estimated budget for the website, however there might be alot of money and time needed for the development of the special automated edit function on the website and a small sum may need to be paid to Adobe for allowing the site to build onto Photoshop.  However I feel it is a respectable yet simple budget to give an idea of the size and time needed for this site in order for it to become a success.

Revenue will be made through subscriptions to the website and also through extensive advertising on the site.  This could not be displayed as it can vary dramatically.

Software and Programmes

Below I have tried to summerize the coding languages and programmes that could be used in the development of the LayerMix website.  There are many coding languages and due to the fact I do not have an extensive coding knowledge base I could only take what was available on certain websites.

The main programmes used will be Photoshop with a piece of Software that will run ontop of this enabling the automatic function in the edit screen.  Ajax will be used as this enables background loading but Java and HTML will also be used due to them being around and being very well known by developers.  A Database will be needed for storing the photos which is MySQL and PHP will be used to interact from the web to this database.  The programmes used will be Flash and Dreamwever to develop the style and look of the website.

There is one big issue with this website design and that is how to make the automation process.  This could be done by taking other sites ideas and then developing a specific piece of software for the LayerMix website.Ideas could come from Facial Recognition software used in Facebook or Flickr, also http://alipr.com/ offers the ability to search for similar images where it must break pictures down to see what is similar on images.

The best thing to develop would be a piece of software that will pick up each individual part of an image, this can be unclear or distorted (within reason) and it will still know roughly where to take the layers apart (automatically).  The texture etc. can then be picked up aswell.  As for seemingly merging photos so they look as one this might involve alot more thinking and development.

Issues

Slight Issue

Throughout this coursework I have been trying to find coding or application slutions that will suit the idea and design for my website.  I found this very difficult as there are websites that allow the editing of functions but it was very limited, in fact I found hardley anything which I could relate to the automatic recognition part of the edit function. 

Therefore it was decided that a whole piece of software may need to be developed in order to hold what this site will require.  This will become very expensive and as I have no idea where to start with this I have left it for now, where it can be picked up when the website is put into production.

Other Issues

Another issue I faced with this wesite in the programming and creation side is the fact that there is going to be alot of photos uploaded and copied/changed.  How would the copyright on photos be adhered to and what would need to be in place to get around this.  One way for the user side is to get users to agree to share images when they are loaded or not.  But what if these are just copied images again.

There is a company called ‘LTU Software’ which can identify copywright infringments or look for stolen art/criminal offences in the image. (http://www.ltutech.com/)  However this might limit the ability of the website so a Content Management System might be used to manage the stream of content handling minor checks.  As long as the gallery stock photos are legitmate and everything is from the user end this will hopefully get around the copyright issues.  However again this will need to be investigated more.

Subscription, Target Audience and Advertising

Subscription

Due to the nature of this website there is going to have to be some sort of subscription for users.  This will be a variable cost over time but when a member first joins there will a one off fixed fee.  This fee will be representative of the cost of the website and results of extensive market research into competitive sites and the cost to join.

Upon initial subscription users will gain access to the website allowing them to upload any image of there own, have access to the free stock images that are available on the website.  The user will also have access to a limited number of other user art and design that are available for download.  Note: For the user to gain access to other users art work the user who owns the work has to agree that it can be used by other people (this will more than likely be done upon upload with a simple box to tick or not).

If the user wants extensive access to unlimited images and stock images then a top up fee for the site will be requierd each year to cover the cost of providing ownership for the photos/images

Target Audience

Due to the nature of this site it is hopefully going to be widely accepted by most age groups.  However due to the nature of the site it will more than likely be appealing to people who are just getting interest into the world of picture editing which can be at any age but more than likely aimed at the younger generation. 

Due to the sharing nature of this website it might be relevent to aim the site at people who will use sites such as Facebook or Flickr as these people will be very aware of the sharing capabilities and the ability to share photos. One thing to mention about flickr is that they are a photo sharing site and might be a problem if the edited images are distributed through there.  Could cause certain problems with content and people getting photos through other means than paying to get the advanced access on LayerMix. 

This is very vague but without a website to compare agaisnt or any information it is just my opinion. 

Advertising

There are a variety of ways in which websites can advertise but for the size and scale of this website when it is first set up adverts will be a very importan stream of revenue for the website.  Advertising will be done by allowing other websites that have some relation to LayerMix (or in some cases not) to be desplayed on the LayerMix website and a nominal fee gets paid to LayerMix for this, whether this be pay-per-click or pay-per-buy.

Below are some examples of advertising techniques that won’t cost anything to add onto the website and would be good for LayerMix to encorporate to get the website known:

Google Ad-Sense - Searches the internet for adverts that are similar to a websites content and audience.

Google Ad-Words – Advertises your website on the google webpage when a search is created for what is similar to that on your website

Pay-Per-Click – This is offered from many websites, it involves placing adverts that link to another website and then everytime the link is clicked your website will gain so much money.  It never is usually alot but this can be built on

Facebook – Seeing as a possible target audience is going to be people who use sharing websites then it would be a good idea to advertise on facebook.

Flickr – The same principal as above could be made for the website flickr which is a photo sharepoint site.  This would be a very good idea for advertising as LayerMix is to do with photos.

 

Money can also be made through the linking of a specialist product website that will give users the ability to buy top of the range products.  If there is a sales then the website would make a small amount of money it is accessed through LayerMix

Flow of Action Diagrams

 Below is a diagram of the whole website and how everything links together.  This shows the logical way of how users should navigate around the website, with the centre being a users personal home page.  Also on this picture in the top right are the small functions that are available to non-members which will give people a taste of what ‘LayerMix’ can do. These are also linked through to the member’s area but non-members will not be able to bypass the system through here.

Everything will be linked together using a standard menu button where the user will be able to access all areas of the site if needed.  This will save the user getting lost.

The diagram below aims to show how a user will get to the page where they can edit a photo and what happens after that.  It is pretty self explanitory but shows the principal to the main selling point and innovate part of the website.  (Further details on the edit page will be added soon)

Interface Design

The design of this website is going to need alot of thought to make it appealing and also to suitable present the work it is trying to show.  I have done some reseach into website design and found a few facts that will influence any website.  According to http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/blink/ web users get first impressions of a web site from the first 50 milliseconds they are on that site which is called the ‘halo effect’.  This is determined by the visual effect of the website in credibility, usability and influence.

Also a good influence on websites is a term called ‘social proofing’.  According to http://www.doshdosh.com/social-proof-optimization/ people are influenced by the people around them and the atmosphere.  If your site is well known and is talked about then people will follow.  There are many other nfluences that change human minds in the way they read or determine colour but this list can go on and on.

Right, so from my idea of the website the design needs to be eye catching with very flowing colours representing the flow of data and the flow of the mind thoughts that the users should get from the site.  However this should not be too bright and too much on the screen as this is a serious art gallery with fun features.  Each page needs to be flowing with not too much information on making the user look around and trying to work out what everything is on the page.  It should be logically laid out.  The design should not take away what the website is trying to offer. 

I have attempted to make a mock-up front page for the ‘layermix’ website but because my skills are limioted in creating this it doesn’t look exactly how it should but it gives a good idea of the website.  It is clear, consice and will hopefully entise people in.

Details

Each page on the website needs to flow into one another as if it were almost a slide show enabling users to want to explore and use the site.

Keeping with the Web 2.0 the interface needs to suit this idea and looking around the Internet certain factors need to be in this website to give it that more web 2.0 feel.  For example the button below is considered a web 2.0 button because it uses clean, glossy colours with good use of gradient.(http://iris-design.info/photoshop/web-20-style-buttons/)

Along with just the way it looks the website needs to be very easy to use and have advanced menu functions which will give the website a very advanced feel to it.  Functions such as the Fish Eye menu system which could be used in the gallery of the website to scroll through the pictures in a users gallery.

Slider based filtering could be used in the judging of competitions

Other details will include the ability to see all photos full screen in the best resolution possible and also the ability to open multiple photos at once.