Navigating in the clouds- Enhancing the selection progress of a personal cloud storage

Abstract

Through the increased use of mobile devices, people are taking photos and shooting videos more than ever before. When combined to the files stored in computers, the overall amount of personal and valuable digital content is growing rapidly. To preserve and organise the massive amounts of data various methods such as external hard drives have been utilised, but combining and storing content from different devices, can be a laborious task. Cloud storages such as Dropbox and Google Drive have gained a wide popularity amongst consumers but the competition in the area is steadily growing and new services are appearing to the market on a steady pace. While privacy regulations and feature selections vary in each Cloud, selecting a suitable Cloud storage can be difficult for consumers.

In this thesis, the goal was to explore the area of a Cloud storage from an user experience point of view, and to discover means to ease up the selection process of a suitable Cloud storage for personal needs.

Literature review as well as previous experience gained while working in a development team of a Cloud storage formed a base for understanding the possibilities and challenges associated in the selected topic. In addition, a selection of Cloud storages were benchmarked to gain further knowledge about the recurring solutions and features. Online surveys and interviews were utilised to obtain diverse perspectives and insights about the usage of Cloud storages.

The final concept consists of a web- based service that allows users to search a Cloud storage based on the included features and the content of the legal agreements. High fidelity user interface visualizations were prepared to represent the visual side of the concept. In addition, ideas for further concept development are presented to support the outcomes of the thesis.