Photory: stories told in captioned photos, scene by scene

Photory wanted a community built around photos and personal stories rather than follower counts.

Telling a story had to be as easy as posting a photo, and reading one as natural as turning a page, on the phone and in the browser.

We worked as one team with Photory, on both the design and the development. Everything starts from the story: a set of photos in order, each with its own caption written on the image.

Making a story happens in one editor: add photos as scenes, crop and filter each one, write its caption, and put the scenes in order. Reading is designed for one hand: a tap on the left of a scene goes back, a tap in the middle hides the caption to show the photo, and a tap on the right moves on. Around the stories sit the community features that keep people coming back: comments and replies, hashtags, profiles and notifications.

The story

• Editor: add photos as scenes, crop, apply filters, write a caption on each photo, and reorder or remove scenes
• Sharing: add your own text and tag people
• Reading: scene by scene, with tap zones to go back, hide the caption or go on, and a full-screen view
• Saving: keep the photo from any scene

The community

• A feed with likes, comments with replies and likes, shares and view counts
• Hashtags with Top and Recent feeds, the option to follow a hashtag, and related hashtags
• Profiles, other people’s profiles and notifications
• Post options for the owner: copy a link to the post or to its content, hide it from the profile, or delete it

On the web

• The public feed in the browser, with sign-in and stories of many photos, likes, comments and views