PastBook
2019-ongoing
- Co-design Workshop
- UX & UI Design
PastBook is an international tech scaleup, with its headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its mission is to help people celebrate life’s most beautiful moments by creating unique photo albums and other memorabilia. Its team members are based in Milan, New York, Vilnius, Colombo, New Delhi and Amsterdam. Printing processes are carried out by various partner printing facilities around the world.
We have been working alongside PastBook for years. The first contact was in 2019, when Stefano Cutello, founder and current innovation consultant within the company, chose Moze to design PastBook’s mobile app.
«At PastBook simplicity is paramount. Our goal is to try to wrap up heavy tech & AI with sleek design & frictionless UXP – so that it feels like magic. Moze has been the ideal partner to make that happen.»
Stefano Cutello
Founder, PastBookThe iOS and Android app powered by AI
With PastBook’s mobile app, initially developed for iOS and later released for Android, anyone can create their own photo book in an instant. Using a powerful Machine Learning engine that runs locally on the smartphone, the app carefully selects images, removing duplicates, blurry photos, and those with motion blur. The user can freely edit the layout, which is visible in the app’s preview, and order their printed book.
From workshop to UX design
We first involved Stefano and key members of his team in a Co-design Workshop. During the workshop, we studied PastBook’s business, mapped out the features of the existing web application, and defined some hypotheses for the user experience of the new mobile app.
Then, our designers developed several concepts and created low-fidelity prototypes of the user interface, allowing the PastBook team to decide which direction to take.
Finally, we designed the app’s complete UI. We worked closely with PastBook’s development team until the release of the native iOS app on Apple’s App Store, ensuring that the final result remained true to the design.
New product experiments
The following year, we focused on researching new product opportunities to leverage PastBook’s technology. Among the concepts we explored with the PastBook team was Tiles, a new home decor accessory: photographs printed in a hexagonal format that can be used to create unique compositions.
Our designers created a web application for configuring and purchasing the product, as well as its launch website.
Time to work on the web platform
PastBook then entrusted us with the redesign of its web application. The web app allows users to create photo books from their Instagram and Facebook accounts and to customize them with easy-to-use editing options.
Mobile app evolution and design system
After the release of the web application, we designed a new, significant feature for PastBook’s iOS and Android app: the Contribution feature, which allows app users to invite others to collaborate in creating an album by sending their photographs.
Alongside the development of this feature, we created PastBook’s design system. Structured through the use of Figma components, the design system enabled the development team to make significant strides in operational efficiency and made the overall user experience more consistent across the various touchpoints of PastBook.
Ready for a revolutionary shift: new AI features
We are working alongside Stefano Cutello and the PastBook team to design new feature concepts based on artificial intelligence and conversational interfaces, which will disrupt the experience of creating and purchasing photo books on PastBook.