Photography

Overview

Photography has a narrower role in a consumer health product than in almost any other kind of interface. A photograph shows a specific person, in a specific body, at a specific moment, and every one of those specifics is a claim.

There are three places a photograph genuinely helps: showing a physical object so somebody can recognise it, whether that is a device, a meter or a test kit; showing a real place or a real person where the product is genuinely about them, such as a named clinician a reader is about to meet; and a photograph the reader took themselves, of a symptom, a meal or a reading.

Everywhere else, the honest options are an illustration or nothing.

opsinjs ships no photography and no photographic guidance beyond the rules below. A product using photography is making brand decisions that a design system should not be making for it.

How it works

The stock-photography failure. The default stock health image is a young, slim, able-bodied, usually white person doing something wholesome in good light. Used once it is unremarkable; used throughout a product it is a statement about who the product imagines its reader to be, and the reader who is not that person notices. This is the concrete failure that Skin-tone representation exists to address, and it applies to age, body size and visible disability just as much as to skin tone.

Photographs of people carry consent obligations. Model releases and licensing terms are two of them. Informed consent is a third, required where an image comes from a real patient, a real clinician or a real setting, and it must be specific about the context of use. These are legal and ethical questions, they vary by jurisdiction, and they are the product's to answer.

Clinical photography is a different discipline entirely. A photograph of a rash, a wound or a symptom used to help somebody compare their own is a clinical image. It needs clinical review, it needs to exist across a range of skin tones or it is useless to most readers, and it needs a warning before it is shown. That is a product decision with clinical governance behind it, not an image-selection decision.

Photographs do not go behind text. A photographic backdrop under a health value is the case the material ladder exists to handle, and the only reliable answer is a scrim heavy enough that the contrast floor is met against the worst region of the image. Where a value is involved, do not put it over a photograph at all.

Photographs taken by the reader are content, not decoration, and they belong to the reader. They are shown at the size and orientation they were taken, never cropped in a way that changes what they show, and they are covered by the product's privacy posture. See On-screen privacy.

Using it

Ask whether the photograph is doing recognition work. "Will the reader recognise a physical thing because of this?" is the question that separates a useful photograph from a mood board.

Do not use a photograph to set a mood on a results screen. Mood is the wrong thing to be setting when somebody is reading a number about their own body.

Never put a value over a photograph. No scrim makes a photographic background a reliable surface for a measurement, and the reading is the one thing on the screen that must be legible in every condition.

Do not crop a symptom photograph. Cropping changes what an image shows, and for anything a reader might compare against their own body that is a correctness issue rather than a layout one.

Show a warning before clinical imagery. A reader who has arrived at a page about a symptom has not consented to seeing a photograph of it. An interstitial with a plain description and an explicit control to view is the minimum.

Tokens

Photography consumes the shape scale for corners and the material ladder for any surface over an image, in particular the scrim rung. It owns nothing.

Accessibility impact

• A photograph's alternative text depends entirely on its job. A device photograph is described so it can be recognised; a decorative one is hidden; a clinical one needs a description written by somebody qualified to write it.
• Text over photography is a contrast problem with no general solution, because the background varies across the image. The scrim rule and the measured floor are on The contrast floor.
• Distressing imagery is an accessibility barrier. Clinical photographs, needles, blood and wounds cause avoidance in a substantial number of readers, including many with the conditions the product serves. A warning and an explicit control to reveal is the accommodation.
• Photographs are heavy, and weight is an accessibility issue for readers on limited data or slow connections. Those readers correlate with the readers a health product most needs to reach.
• A reader's own photographs are personal data on screen, subject to the same hide-and-blur posture as any other health value.

Related

• Skin-tone representation is the requirement that applies to any photographic set showing people.
• Materials → The contrast floor has the scrim rule for anything over an image.
• On-screen privacy says what happens to a reader's own images when the app goes to the background.