Archy’s POC imaging experience didn’t feel very immersive. Some feedback we heard from the first costumers was that it was hard to focus on the mount and especially on the selected image.
Moving forward we also had to consider additional features and tools so a better way to surface these tools was needed.
One of the first thoughts was that the imaging UI did not need to keep the general chrome and navigation present on the main UI. Removing those elements should make the experience feel more immersive and would also free up real state to organize the tools in a much more scalable way.
As far as the focus on a single image, having it as a modal with the mount still visible behind was making the UI unnecessarily busy.
When we looked at the competition, it was very clear that all competitors had similar problems and that to stand out from it Archy needed to become way more clean, focused and modern looking.
As a separate underlying project, Archy also went through a major redesign bringing the POC UI towards a more modern, scalable design that included a new design system.
We took a fresh look at how the user would manage and add new mounts and images, allowing for mounts to be edited and providing a really intuitive way to define wha type of mount the user wanted to build.
For the main mount view, all parts of the main experience were removed, leaving the user completely immersed in the imaging UI.
Two different tool sets were created. One vertical on the left to host all tools that are mostly image specific and contextual to image selection. And one horizontal on the top right to host all general actions the user can take on the mount.
For the image edit focused state we cleared the canvas of all other mount elements so the user could effectively work on the selected image, using most of the screen for it.
The third party AI tools were integrated with the image edit tool set and revealed an additional panel with options and configurations of the AI analysis.
Images can also be compared in 2x2 or 4x4 views, which adds a vertical carousel to the UI for navigation and selection.
The multiple editing tools were resolved in a way to be the least intrusive to the image itself, using sliding elements that reveal and hide themselves as the user interacts with each tool.