This article is part of Sparklin’s fortnightly series — One thing at a time (OTAT).
12 November 2021
Humans are reminiscent of their past — their favourite vacation, trip, trek, date and conversation. We take pictures of everything, just so we can revisit them sometime in the future. No meal is complete without a picture, no trip is successful without a sunset shot, and your gym visit doesn’t count unless you click a picture and post it on social media 👀
With the advent of smartphones and the incessant need to take pictures of everything — Rise Above Research predicts that by the time this year ends — which is in 58 days — the global number of images taken in 2021 should be at 1.4 trillion 🤯
So it’s official — we have way too many pictures on our phones. And this isn’t without challenges of its own. Try searching for that aesthetically pleasing photo you took with your best friends on a boat at Niagara Falls. The task in itself is extremely daunting.
Fortunately, Apple Photos is intuitive. Looking for specific photos is easier than ever with the search feature.
From letting you search for specific people or objects in pictures to presenting you with relevant memories when the time is right, Apple Photos does it all.
Try searching for ‘waterfall’, ‘scenery’ or ‘your best friend’s name’, and you will find what you were looking for.
Apple Photos uses on-device machine learning to scan all your pictures & videos, identify people, and tag them. This helps you to find specific people, places and events.
Moreover, the Memories feature in Apple Photos intelligently curates your photos, thus allowing you to relive and rediscover the best moments 🙌
Although, what happens when AI fails to tag a person for you? Will the picture ever show up in your memory? We think not.
You see, AI can only do so much. There are multiple occasions where AI fails to recognise a person. Even the smartest of technologies can’t recognise a distorted face.
No matter how intelligent, expensive or intuitive your phone is — it’s not magic! The light, rain, poor quality or photo-bombers are bound to ruin most of your pictures when you are having a good time 🥺
If you like it, then you should’ve put a ̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ tag on it
To enhance the process of rediscovery, we want to make a simple addition — a ‘+’ button that manually lets you tag people in Apple Photos.
All you have to do once you open a picture is click on the ‘+’ button in the bottom left corner of your photo. When you do that, it’ll show you all the recognised faces.
Your task is to select the unrecognised face and click on ‘Tag with Name’ — this will further take you to your contact list. Select a contact, and voila!
This system will aid discovery, along with helping the machine/AI learn who a face belongs to. Hence, the next time it will automatically tag the ‘unrecognised face’ in pictures it earlier couldn’t.
The next time you try and look for not-so-specific pictures of a specific someone, Apple Photos has you covered!
This really is the OTATiest of all OTATs, huh? One thing. One button. One addition. One solution 😬
One thing at a time (OTAT)
Think of ‘one thing at a time’ as a bite-sized modification to a platform, to heighten the user experience. We at Sparklin shall sincerely try to share OTAT one Thursday a fortnight.
There will not be a major change to the platforms but possibly a single element that can be introduced, changed, moved or altered, to improve the overall UX.
We keep updating this post with all the OTATs as they go live. You can also read individual OTATs on our Medium channel.
P.S.You might also want to check the UX tips we share every Tuesday.
