Panasonic recently released it’s new iteration of the compact SLR-equivalent camera, which targets the average consumers rather than professional SLR photographers. The compactness of this camera is archived by eliminating the mirror box, hotshoe socket and optical viewfinder unit, while keeping most of the SLR goodness in a convenient and small housing. But most importantly, the camera comes with a 3-inch big touchscreen LCD and a secondary dial control, eliminating the need of many feature-specific buttons that are commonly seen in professional SLR cameras. In spite of the revolutionary mirrorless SLR technology, what interests me most is its touchscreen user interface.

The first time I learned about this camera and it’s touchscreen control was from it’s TV ad in Japan. In this ad series, the photographer is trying to capture the cute moments of a cat, which highlights its high-speed auto focus, touch-controlled focal point and shutter, and easiness to take pictures with blurry background (shallow depth of field).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZi-l_QYzf4

Touchscreen as a camera interface

Touchscreen is one of the main selling point of this camera. At a first glance, it feels like a gimmick that rides on the popularity of multi-touch powered smartphones. After reading its product catalog, however, it seems that the designer did carefully design the UI to take advantage of the touch hardware. Moreover, in the manual creative mode called iA Plus, there are three controls that user can easily adjust: defocus (depth of field), brightness (exposure compensation), and colour control (colour temperature).

I think the selection of these three specific controls is a careful observation of users and their most desired results that were only archivable with traditional SLR camera and some training. Take defocus for example: many people really like the effect of sharp main object with blurry background; but in order to archive such effect of shallow depth of view, one must know how to deal with shutter speed + aperture + sensor ISO. However, the GF3 camera does all the hard work for you, leaving you only one control of the background blurriness.

In terms of user experience design, by simplifying the traditional SLR controls into one defocus control, user can still feel in control to the creative process while greatly reducing the learning time and difficulty to operate the camera. Novice and post-novice users can enjoy the result of a reasonably professional looking picture. That will satisfy their emotional goal:

“Enjoy professional-looking photography casually without the headache of learning about F-stop and stuff” and ”play a role in the creative process and get a sense of achievement”

A similar experience design that result in “getting a sense of achievement” can be observed from Betty Crocker’s famous “Just add an egg” cake mix tale.

You can learn more about the touchscreen interface from this product detail page:
http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/systemcamera/gms/gf3/ia.html#leadtitle

Pictures from official site: main UI

Soft focus creative mode

Ad poster in JR train

This talk from Simon Sinek is about inspirational leadership. He explains the difference between a typical leadership and a truly inspiring leadership, with three concentric circles labelled “What”, “How” and “Why” from the outside to the inside. Those are the three qualities of a leadership:

1. Almost all individuals and organizes know what they are doing. All companies know what they’re making and selling for profit, be it a computer manufacturer, software development company or a furniture store.
2. Some of them know how to to it well.
3. Only a few among all know why they do it. What’s your purpose, your cause, your believe. Why do we exist. Profit is not the reason, it’s just the end result of the process.

Simon gave an example of a marketing message that’s from the outside in (what > how > why):

Apple makes great computers > they’re beautifully design, simple to use, and user-friendly > Wanna buy one?

But this is what Apple communicates it’s value from the inside out (why > how > what):

Everything we do we believe in challenging the conventions, we believe in thinking differently > the way to archive that is to make our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly > which we happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?

“People don’t why what you do, they buy why you do it.” That’s the main point of being inspirational. Believe in purpose, believe in meaning.

TED Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html