The Journey has just got a little more exciting for us
Zoomdeck is a beautifully designed, engaging new experience for photos.
When you look at photos, you realize that almost every photo has different interesting stories and elements in them. Yet, how many of them are you able to discover or share? Haven't you always had questions when you came across a photo - What model of a Ferrari is this? Who is that person? What top is she wearing? How much does it cost, where can I buy one?
Zoomdeck lets you "spot" things inside photos - add notes, audio, video, places, people, links or anything that's relevant (or simply fun!). Spots are rich, interactive, smart and unobtrusive - so others can easily discover and engage with the photo in ways one could never imagine before. What's more, the conversations on Zoomdeck are based on each "spot" - so they are always contextual. More context equals better engagement.
The journey for us started in 2012. Deepak, my co-founder, has always had a big passion for photography and I have often found him to be crazy at times with his attention for details! But that’s exactly what led to Zoomdeck. Zoomdeck was born out of his need to have a better experience to talk about the details in photos that he was posting on his blog. It was after a few months that I joined him and it has been an eventful journey for us all this while.
We built our first prototype and did an alpha. Got in and graduated from the first batch of the GSF Accelerator Program. It was a great experience being part of the GSF first batch interacting with a few of the brightest minds in the country, getting feedback and suggestions on what to try and what not to. During this time we also interacted with hundreds of users including a few publishers. It has been fun interacting with users trying to understand their experience while using the product, understanding each action of their’s using the product and iterating on a few minor and at times a few major changes to the design elements.
Being a platform with both consumers and publishers having a major say, we have been fanatical in our focus on building an awesome user experience. We worked with some of the best designers to dig deep and build a product that we think users really want and enjoy. Saneef Ansari - who worked with us for designing our experience is from NID and has worked with some of the best design firms in the world. He is one of the best interaction design expert you could find, is a little expensive though!:-) At times, we have had heated debates, arguments, disagreements on various features, functionalities, interactions and design elements, a few sleepless nights on redbull, caffeine over-dose and whole lot of shawarmas!
We have used almost all parts of our office space trying to figure out features, elements and the design interactions on the platform.
Figure 1: Trying to figure out all the elements that makes Zoomdeck
Figure 2: Digging deep to figure out Interactions and elements that make a Photo beautiful
Figure 3: Figuring out each each Tab/ Action on the Site
Figure 4: Cracking our brains trying to figure out the UI
Figure 5: Designing the UI Element: Spot Description
Meanwhile, during this time we had also got on-board Sumit Gupta, the face behind our iOS app. Designing the web was challenging, however getting the experience right on a phone app was even more challenging with the limitation of the screensize. But it was a challenge we found to be fun and exciting and I must say, Sumit is one of the most passionate guys I have seen.
All this while our community was slowly but steadily growing as well, actively spotting stories and elements giving us valuable feedback. We have grown to more than 10,000 photos and 30,000 spots during this time with an active and vibrant community across US, Europe, Australia and India.
And, here we are today after a few months of hard-work & toil, valuable feedback & amazing spots from our beloved community and a whole lot of exciting moments along the way, on the verge of another awesome moment: We make Zoomdeck go public and we are so excited to see all of you awesome people pour in and enjoy the endless stream of interactive photos discovering and sharing the stories and elements that make them.
We have built Zoomdeck with a lot of heart and we do hope you take Zoomdeck to your heart as well! J
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