In 2006 Tiny Picture’s was a new innovative product breaking the way for mobile photo sharing services, like Instagram today. Using the expertise in mobile photo sharing I had harnessed from both my research at UC Berkeley and from our efforts at Caterpillar Mobile, I helped Tiny Pictures on the design of their first product Radar. Radar was a private mobile photo-sharing community. Based off of much the same research and thinking on on how mobile technologies were changing the landscape for media sharing, specifically, photos – which we conducted at UC Berkeley and harnessed through Caterpillar Mobile – Radar sought to bring the intimacy of the mobile phone to photo sharing. It hoped to create a visual conversation between just you and your friends.

A bit early, as were many mobile start ups which ventured out “pre-iPhone”, Radar grew a nice community of users and served as an early step to communities like Instagram. I did a redesign of their mobile web application, which looked at pivoting private visual conversations around author, time-date of post, etc. The design document, which walks through my entire design process is linked above. Eventually Tiny Pictures was bought by Shutterfly and became integrated into their mobile products. You can still see some of the legacy of the designs in Shutterfly Mobile and Tiny Prints (above). Though the business model during this time had challenges, this product was really was a groundbreaker for applications to come once the mobile ecosystem matured. Only in 2015, did it become even possible to consider creating “private” networks, which also scaled quick enough to sustain a healthy business.