Locked away in an office building doing R&D, you can need a top-up on who your users are and how they use your product. So a couple of Sundays ago I went with a work colleague and a couple of friends down to the Opera House to watch people taking photos. Got some photos of people taking photos.
In planning this little excursion, I expected a bit of a top-up about what people are doing with cameras. As much as anything, I expected one of my pet camera re-design ideas to be confirmed. Though after only 40 minutes of sitting in the sun I found I wasn't thinking about those ideas I brought with me anymore... it was the brand new conclusions I was now making about how and why people were using their cameras because of what I was seeing right in front of me!
Now a bit about the photo. Since all of this was on a day off, and wasn't an officially work sponsored event, our debrief was a little more relaxed than normal. Someone out there might recognise the coffee table from Wine Odyssey in The Rocks, Sydney. By the way, that's Kevin & Vera's iPad tethered to their Canon 5D MkII. Looks like a great niche use for a tablet. It made me head past the Sydney Apple Store on the way home. Only because the Apple Store closes early on Sunday was I saved from that impulse buy which gave me time to really think: is downloading photos from your Canon DSLR really the Killer app for the iPad?
