Contextual Research, SCAD, 2014

The Culture of Cellphone Photography offers fascinating insights into contemporary culture and customs, crossing boundaries of geography and time, public and private, personal and professional.

Buzz Reports and a Popular Media Scan resulted in a rich trove of topical information and trends that we fed and filtered through an AEIOU map. Activities include cropping and composition, capturing and sharing, storytelling, and documenting. Public versus private and professional versus personal informed Environments. Interactions ranged from hashtagging, captioning, sharebility, archiving, and selling. Objects were mostly from the technology world: hardware, software, platforms and accessories. Finally, Users ran the gamut from amateurs to artists, celebrities to politicians, brands to social groups.

We identified six distinct eras in cellphone photography. Digital Dawn was pre-millennial, Launch of Cellphone Photography happened between 2000-2, and Social Domination occurred from 2003-6. The iPhone Debut took over 2006-7, while the Selfie Boom ruled 2007-11 and ultimately morphed into the Usies Boom until this year. We then defined topics to categorize as Innovations (both technology and attributes), User Activities, The Social Breakthrough and then analyzed Cultural Meaning.

As had discovered earlier that Objects were mostly technology, we elected to create an Industry Innovation Map, cross referencing the major events and products in the areas of platforms, hardware, software and accessories, starting with the first photo back in 1822. Interesting insights were the near-extinction of the traditional photo album as digital storage options became widely available and the fact that the advances in smartphones seemed to stall the development of the camera industry in general.

We each took a social media platform and analyzed 10 user categories over a two-week period to look for patterns of activity. The groups we ‘shadowed’ digitally included: Active User, Fashion Designer, Celebrity Icon, Branded Blogger, Fitness Freak, Amateur Artist, Politician, Magazine/Media, and Concept Shop, which features a collection of cohesively-random inspirational images.

HOW
Clustered our notes and quotes into related groups.
Identified similarities between the notes and quotes and further organized them.
Then we assigned blue Post- its that represented a common theme among the notes and quotes.
Then we grouped the themes further into pink Post-its that represented the themes from the blue Post-its.
Then we developed a main topic that we derived from the pink Post-its.
 

• Capitalize on and increase the speed for capture and sharing of images.

• Restructure the style and content of our messages.

• Empower the user as a creative agent.

• Market products through more intimate channels.

• Create transparency in the capturing and publishing of photos.

• Reduce reliance on tools and technology and shift the focus to relationships by using photos to create stronger connections.

• Replicate the experience captured in an image for the audience.
• Improve real-time reporting in order to offer the audience a more compelling experience.

• Replace words with photos in digital conversations.

• Expand opportunities for users to practice strategic editing.

• Link commerce to content.

• Create awareness of unauthorized access and use of images.

• Personalize images better.