Letter to Affinity Developers

[rjvela82]

Imagine an app that integrates the locally installed Affinity software with an online asset collection service from Serif paid through yearly subscription.

I call it "Afffinity Collage" an Affinity app that serves as a locally installed asset and project manager for the Affinity suite. However, the key persona in this new app is called "Spotlight" (yes, just like our Spotlight newsletters from Serif), where you pay $50 a year (in line with a single Affinity app), to store and share an online showcase of your work, portfolio, and community assets.

Back to the locally installed Collage app, there are two additional personas:  the main persona ties the operating system files to the App's library of folders and collections. 

Studio Examples for main Collage persona: 

• Preview Studio, which shows content in a large view depending on the studio you're browsing:
• File Browser Studio, (i.e. OS files and folders)
• Library Browser Studio (for separating different lines of work, graphic designer, photography etc),
  • Collections Browser, (where you can create manual or smart asset repositories)
  • Project Browser ( where you can store client related assets, or any project)
• Tag Browser (an internal tagging system where you can browse by tag)
• Task Browser (simple flagging studio)

This is straight forward until now, but there is the 2nd persona which is unique, it is the Portfolio persona and it essentially serves as a staging area for assets that sync with the Spotlight subscription service.

The general usability of the Portfolio persona is that it mostly mirrors your Library, Collections, and Projects, but only the assets that are marked as Portfolio appear. 

The user can mark and unmark portfolio assets from either the Main Collage persona or the Portfolio persona itself. The Portfolio persona removes all of the management aspects of your projects and simply features and highlights the most desirable assets of your projects, collections, etc, for the purpose of seeing a showcase of your work. From this persona you can push specific portfolio items to your Spotlight Subscription Service profile.

The last persona, is the Spotlight persona, a website viewer. On the surface it seems just to be only a web viewer for the Spotlight website, but what you can do is build a collection of public assets that you don't have to browse the website for. This studio could be shared with the main Persona for flexible usability. I think this kind of connection with your internal Affinity files and your user Spotlight profile would be magic, but I also want to mention that a lot of people might criticize that it makes no sense to add a website viewer in the app, but I wholeheartedly disagree because this creates a seamless experience as far as managing your project data, your portfolio data, and your public asset library. This is basically what Collage is and does. 

I could go on how I imagine such an app would impact the Affinity ecosystem but I have no need because Affinity generated community assets has to be in the cards for Serif sooner or later, but I think an app that connects the Spotlight public profile of an Affinity user with their internal assets and private collections creates a truly unique, and worthwhile experience which also adds manifold value back to the Spotlight subscription service.

 

thank you

 

P.S. Pls note, these are just conceptual ideas, pls do not be overly critical to me on specifics. I'm sure the community here could piggyback hundreds of more great and useful ideas. -- again -- thank you for taking time to read this post

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by rjvela82
edited for clarification

[German_Printer]

A very nice thought