24 Hours With #NewVSCO

Why I believe we must all go against the grain to move our industry forward. This past Thursday VSCO rolled out their VSCO Cam version 5.0 to the world with a completely redesigned gesture based application. A lot of people hated it or loved it. There wasn’t a lot in between that I saw. But when I first opened the new application I was greeted with a short tutorial with how to navigate between spaces in the app. For about 5 minutes of using it I was very confused and wasn’t sure if I would become a fan of the updated redesign. After forcing myself to keep playing with it and to keep testing it out and navigating between the different spaces I not only learned exactly how to jump between the different sections very easily I saw the different layering of pages inside of the app. Which I liked. I have spent about 24 hours using the app pretty heavily using basically all the functions the app offers. – Create, edit, share, discover etc… The weirdest thing to get used too was the lack of a menu but it turns out that’s been the feature I love using the most. I have never interacted with pages and spaces inside a mobile application like this before. It was a totally new experience that once I got used too and learned I fell in love. At the bottom is the “Globe” which is what you use to navigate throughout the apps major functions.A lot of the negative feedback I’ve seen has been about the lack of the menu or the change to how your Library of images are displayed. They are now smaller. The varying heights and widths of the images are not cropped to a square thumbnail like the previous version of the app. Here’s why I think the Library change is so crucial to editing and culling images after we created them – Here is a screenshot of my library currently.I, personally, don’t mind they change. I think it’s refreshing to see which images that may be similar are either vertical or horizontal. So I can discern between images that are taken back-to-back without clicking on and off of each image. But this change seems to be the biggest complaint and I personally believe it is because it is just different. This Journal post from their design team clearly shows the thought and the importance, as well as, trends people have used to display images in the past and how we view Objects In Space. This other Journal post also speaks to how the way we view images inside our Studio space and how that shifts to how we see them elsewhere through the app when multiple images are grouped together. The way images are now displayed throughout the app, not just in your Studio (Library) but everywhere, makes so much more sense after reading how they executed the way we view objects in their space in the app. Let’s talk about the menu for a second – This “Globe” is the only way to navigate through the space in the app. IT has 4 main functions: down to access Camera, left to access your Studio, right to access your Feed and down to Search. Every thing outside of those functions happens in a multiple levels of “cards” that you shuffle up and down over and and under. Exited by a arrow in the top left which sometimes with one hand is difficult to access. I wish I could pull the “card” down without having to pull directly onto the arrow itself. It would make one handed navigation through the app so much quicker. This feature is the most ground breaking feature of the app. This is huge. It shows you that side / hamburger menus do not have to exist on mobile. There are other options. I have yet to see or interact with an app that relies completely on gestures and I am completely open with being wrong on that. But I can’t think of one right now that relies on it as much as VSCO Cam 5.0 does. (ps if you have any others that are similar to this new UI, please send them my way.) I believe this shift in mobile UI / UX design is why VSCO is at the forefront. It wouldn’t surprise me that we may see hamburgers and slide out menus on mobile be a thing of the past with hardware and software heading where they are. This Journal post explains better their shift to this menu / navigation change. Final Thoughts I think this shift is huge on VSCO’s part. They went against the grain of what everyone was doing and created something so unique and different that is pushing boundaries of how we think about and use applications on these little super computers in our pockets. I think that a lot of people will stop using the app unfortunately because of this drastic change. But I think in a day and age so muddied with poor design and repetitive, predictable “template” based design. To see a company of their size not conform but to innovate in their industry that needs innovation so badly is going to set them apart from everyone else more than they already have in the past. They are going to create trends not follow them. They are going to push the average user to see things differently and to think differently all together. — Not just in art and creative spaces but in how we view the world, how we respond to the world, and how we, as humans — interact with another. This drastic UI / UX shift is much more than just an application change but it’s a eye opening exercise for us to think differently and more creatively in a world that seems to suck it right out of us in every way possible. We, as creatives and as individuals, need to take what VSCO has done in an application and apply it to our thinking and our lives—to our creative outlets in music, photography and design and challenge ourselves to wake up everyday and create something new and organic. Not something that we wish we created, but create something that only we as one human being to another can do. To create through the vain of our own unique personal vision. That is the best way to make things that are the best we can possibly make them. We all have a unique way of interacting and seeing the world, let’s take advantage of that and use that gift to the best of our ability. Always push yourself to move forward.