Bilder Inc. - Ecosystem for personal photography

Why Bilder Inc.?

This project addresses a huge interest of mine: the handling of personal photos in the digital age.

I noticed that many struggle with a cluttered personal photo library: old analogue photos in boxes in the attic, on old phones or computers which do not function anymore, multiple cloud storage spaces…

This leads to photos being non accessible and thus memories are vanishing.

Bilder Inc. is my result of a imaginary ecosystem to prevent this: To store all personal photos in one place and to encourage the frequent reminiscing of those memories.

Key Features

• A central storage solution for all your photos
• A device ecosystem for easy digitalization and viewing of your personal memories:
  • BilderBox - The heart of the Bilder family, its main processing unit
  • BilderBook - A digital photo album
  • BilderBeam - A mini photo projector for spontaneous slideshows
  • BilderScan - A portable scanner for paper photos or photo books
• Buy it and put it in your home. Access photos from anywhere, no privacy concerns
• AI powered software organization and sharing solutions

Project approach

This project was my bachelor thesis, I structured it into 3 main parts:

• Part 1 - Research: gathering insights through questionnaires and conducting interviews
• Part 2 - Product design: concepting a solution approach and iterating through its features and physical manifestations
• Part 3 - Presentation: as this project was a product concept, the presentation was key. I developed a fake marketing website to sell the idea.

Part 1: Research

First I conducted an online survey about personal photography with a total of 115 participants. Secondly I interviewed 18 persons from different age groups, cultures and genders about this topic. You can view the final research document and thesis paper (german only files).

Here is an overview of some of the research results:

Part 2: Product design

After the research was done, I developed a product family concept that could solve the issues i have identified.

The rendering setup while creating the 3D animations for this project.

Early sketches of the "all in one" product design approach

More advanced 3D model variants of the BilderBox

E-Ink display I bought for creating a working physical prototype of the BilderBook

And the result was the Bilder Family:

BilderBox

The heart of the Bilder family. BilderBox houses all of the Bilder family as well as storage and processing power.

BilderBook

Digital photo album. BilderBook combines the best of the digital and analog worlds.

BilderBeam

Mini photo projector. Show the your photos in big-picture style with BilderBeam.

BilderScan

Portable photo scanner. The most efficient way to digitize your photos.

Part 3: Presentation

As this project was a product concept, the presentation was key. I developed a fake marketing website to sell the idea.

I used Eleventy SSG, to have a clean and simple frontend stack with reusable components.

For the scrolling animations I used ScrollMagic with a custom logic to draw the images to a canvas element.