A few months after launch, we began adding additional cameras with their own unique design and photo style. The OG cam remained the default, but we frequently added new cameras for holidays or just to spice things up.

Drag up and down on the zoom bar to preview the zoom animations for each camera!

To make pre-rendered 3D cameras work, I designed a custom system of slicing and exporting the cameras in chunks to be reassembled in code. This way, we kept file sizes and load times down by only animating what we needed to.

The Filters

Each camera had its own unique filter, which consisted of a custom LUT and "hand generated" grain. I designed most of the filters used for the cameras. I tried to make the filters for the "normal" cameras useful in a variety of situations, while the holidays got more intense filters.

A few groups of sample images taken with different cameras.

Let's Roll

Outside of the camera, Dispo was also a social network, and it needed to be designed in a way that made both the shooting and sharing experience feel easy and seamless. Since disposable cameras use rolls of film, we used them as the metaphor for where your photos are saved to.

The roll creation process, the "Shooting to" menu, and selecting photos in the Library to share

Rolls could be public or private, and you could shoot to multiple rolls at one time. All photos were also saved to your Library.

The photo viewer, user profiles, and the photo sharing menu

Eventually, we added a feed to the app so it was easier to see all of the incoming photos from your friends. To make things more interesting, we added the ability to add emoji reactions on the photos themselves.

The feed, which allowed users to view photos added to rolls or posted to the feed directly.

Rolls themselves were treated as chat rooms, using the color of the roll to set the color of the interface. When photos were added to the roll, users could chat about their night out and see the replies to the new photos.

Initial designs for implementing "rolls are chat rooms"

In addition to designing the UI, I drew all of the icons for the app, and created the brand guide to outline the color schemes, fonts, and general design direction for the app so new designers and developers could reference it.

Most of the icons I designed for the app

Pages from the brand guide

Getting Experimental

Part of my job was coming up with new and unique ways to set Dispo apart as a social network. I explored expanded chat functionality, new camera interactions, unique takes on profiles, and more.

What if the user profiles were entirely made of 3D components, like the cameras are?

Most of these ideas never made it into the app. I unfortunately didn't have much say in what we ended up implementing, and in my opinion the app became very confusing and bloated because of it.

Some users wanted access to a "full screen camera", so I experimented with making the whole app one camera and just changing the filter.

Not every experiment was practical or useful, but it was a fun exercise to try to break outside of what norms have been established on social media platforms.

Some alternative home designs, removing the feed in favor of direct access to friends and rolls

Most of these ideas never made it into the app. I unfortunately didn't have much say in what we ended up implementing, and in my opinion the app became very confusing and bloated because of it.

I joined Dispo several months before it launched in 2021 to design the camera system and some of the UI. I took over as lead designer later that year, and continued to design for the app until early 2023.

Disclaimer: I do not recommend downloading Dispo. I left due to disagreements over the product direction and the handling of user data. Many users lost important photos due to decisions that were made, such as locking viewing photos behind ads, intentionally making saving photos to the camera roll difficult, and ultimately wiping the servers. If you used Dispo and lost photos, i'm very sorry.