FACET
COLLABORATIVE LIFE JOURNAL
SIMPLE SOCIAL
YOUR LIFE IS NOT AN AD.
Facet is a return to simpler form of social media with the narrow scope of plainly letting people who know each other share their memories and lives collectively.
Facet seeks to avoid the complexities and machinations that made it difficult to us and enjoy current social media.
THE FACET STORY
WE CARRY PEOPLE WITH US
After spending time trying to catalog the memories of people that I’ve know, I really wanted a better way to do it.
I had tried Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, and just a Dropbox folder. There wasn’t anything that let me share the memories and document them on a timeline that was easily viewable and searchable. I didn't just want to share a photo, I wanted to be able to tag that photo at a certain time or period and then be able to view the connectivity between me and another person. There wasn’t anything that made it easy; there were bad or compromised solutions, but there wasn’t anything that did what I wanted the way that I wanted to do it.
The initial concept that flowed from the desire to share and the frustration with the current tools was to create an app that would let me and others catalog their memories (photos, objects, chats, songs, emails, etc.) and then put them into a linked timeline. The process went from sketches, renders, prototypes, and now the App.
Facet was created because we all carry memories of each other that no one else has access to. We have fragments of friends, family, loved ones, and even distant acquaintances that could be combined with other memories to build a more holistic view of a person. These memories are usually hidden away, spread across hundreds of people, persisting, while the ones we remember may live unknowing of this enduring influence.
Facet was built to assemble and share these pieces on the timeline of our lives. It’s a place to share the music, photos, objects, quotes, locations, and more that we associate with the people who, even through distance and time, we still preserve and celebrate. And, in sharing the pieces of others that we carry with us, we communicate the lasting impacts they’ve had.
FACET EVOLUTION
FROM FIRST DRAWING TO TIMELINES AND UIUX ZONES
BRAND TENETS
Make memories not metrics.
Build rich memories and journal entries on your timeline.
Co-create memories to others' journals.
Save photos, videos, music, text, and core memories.
Search and Sort easily through your timeline.
Manage custodial accounts to build memories for others.
Return focus to your friends and family, not influencers.
Your life isn’t an ad.
Facet is a return to simplified social connectivity.
Engage your contacts not strangers.
We don’t promote an influencer culture.
We don’t permit brand accounts or groups.
We don’t manipulate your feed to keep your attention.
Collection and connection, not influence and division.
FLOW
There were many iterations for the flow of the site, but below shows a close to final wireframe that became the eventual app from an onboarding to a first post perspective. I was working with a phenomenal engineer/developer who really understood not only the flow and the images but what they might perform like. He was integral to the evolution of the app and it’s feel.
GOALS:
Create a place the that simplifies sharing memories with other people and is easy to search and sort.
Create place where a person’s whole can be built from shared and sometimes seemingly disparate memories threaded through different people and at different points in time.
Create a space free from the typical social media manipulation and influencer culture that turns our moments into advertisements.
Create a place where we can share our experiences with others to understand each other more fully.
Create and enduring space to keep and hold memories so that they can persist across generations.
LOGO IDEATION
Below is the logo journey for the app. I was working solo on this while working a full time job, so the logo took a back seat; however, it was fun to approach the logo when I had the time, and it evolved into a strong mark with weight and presence.
INITIAL
Initial concepts played with the letter F, crystalline structures and an open book merged with a flower (for fun). I also played with using the morse code spelling of Facet in the logo border, but decided to keep it simple.
EVOVLED
I showed the design to a few design friends, and moved forward with the bold isometric F, the flower book, and an isometric cube made of Fs.
FINAL
Decided to go with the isometric extruded F because of its bold presence and modularity for other graphic expressions.
PROMOTIONAL IMAGERY
The logo lends itself to alternate expressions easily. The promotional image below were meant to show that Facet is capable of music, communication, text, location, and photos. I used old and iconic examples of communication devices from Voyager to Eniac to the first digital camera from Kodak.
APP STORE PROMOTION
I needed a way to tell the Facet story in a few images in the Apps Store. To do this, I showed the concepts of the main grid screen and the innovative timeline. I moved from there to show how the user can build memories, share them many ways, and view them in their feed. Lastly, I wanted to show how the user could control their timeline with additions and rejections as well as our powerful search implementation.
