---
title: "Photo Butler case study — Kwirita"
description: "Shared photo streams for events, with AI choosing the best shots. Product direction, concepts for who pays, and co-branded designs for partnerships with brands."
url: "https://kwirita.com/work/photo-butler/"
---

# Photo Butler

Shared photo streams for events, with AI choosing the best shots. Product direction, concepts for who pays, and co-branded designs for partnerships with brands.

Plate III. *Glare*.

- **Years**: 2015–2019
- **Role**: Founding product designer
- **Setup**: Boston company; I worked remotely with the founders
- **Scope**: Product direction, interface design, business-model concepts, co-branded experiences
- **Platform**: iOS, web

## The company

Photo Butler was a Boston startup built on a simple observation: the photos from an event end up scattered across everyone’s phones, and the good ones rarely reach the people in them. Its free iOS app, launched in August 2017, let a host start a live photo stream and invite guests to add to it. Its selection software used AI to surface the best shots and drop the duplicates and blurry ones.

By December 2017 organizations could run geofenced public streams. In August 2018 the Pan-Mass Challenge launched the PMC Photo App powered by Photo Butler. Photos were tagged by rider and team, sorted by AI, and highlights were generated automatically.

## The work

I joined in December 2015 as founding product designer and worked remotely with the founders in Boston for nearly four years. Much of that time went into a hard question the company answered more than once: who pays for shared photos? With the founders I explored design concepts for different business models and routes to market, from a consumer app to streams for organizations to a platform brands could put inside their own apps, and worked with engineering on prototypes.

Part of the work was co-branded. I designed concepts for brand partnerships and pitches, for brands including Disney, Universal Studios, Red Bull, Samsung, Royal Caribbean, and Spartan Race, each one fitting Photo Butler’s technology into the brand’s own products. The Pan-Mass Challenge’s app is the one that launched publicly.

## What carried over

Software that picks photos for people will sometimes pick the wrong one, and at a live event the wrong one can end up on the big screen. Designing around a model means designing for its mistakes. Decide what the product shows when it guesses wrong, and how much it explains.

## Sources

- [PRWeb, August 2017 launch](https://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/08/prweb14624917.htm)
- [Built In Boston, November 10, 2017](https://www.builtinboston.com/2017/11/10/boston-startup-photo-butler-group-share-photos)
- [PRWeb, December 13, 2017](https://www.prweb.com/releases/photo_butler_adds_public_streams_to_real_time_photo_sharing_platform/prweb15008723.htm)
- [Marketing Dive, August 28, 2018](https://www.marketingdive.com/press-release/20180828-pan-mass-challenge-launches-pmc-photo-app-powered-by-photo-butler/)

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---

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