Personal project 2026 · Concept, UX/UI, visual and sound design
Berlin Vintage Photobooth
A digital photobooth that brings back the magic of not knowing.
Try it live ↗
The idea
My husband and I have a small tradition: wherever we travel, we look for a photobooth. Every country has its own, but the one in Berlin stuck with me. The old Photoautomat machines stand all over the city, and stepping into one feels like travelling back in time. You sit down, the flash goes off four times, and then you wait, with no idea how the photos turned out. A few minutes later a strip drops out of the slot, and you have a small souvenir of the trip.
I wanted to recreate that feeling for anyone, anywhere, right in the browser.
The challenge
Digital cameras have taught us to control everything: live preview, endless retakes, filters before we even press the button. The magic of the analog booth comes from the opposite. You can’t see yourself, you can’t retake, and you have to wait.
How do you design a digital experience around uncertainty and anticipation, without it feeling broken?
Key decision: no preview
The most important and most counterintuitive decision was to leave out the camera preview. Users only see a 3-2-1 countdown on a dimmed screen. The first time they see themselves is on the finished strip.
This goes against a basic UX convention, so I tested it. One piece of feedback was that users weren’t warned before the shooting started. I prototyped an instruction plate on the booth and a shot counter, then decided against both. A little surprise is part of the experience, and a slightly awkward first frame is exactly what makes real photobooth strips charming.
Designing the wait
If the result is hidden, the moments around it have to carry the experience:
Sound. A shutter click and flash pop for each shot. While the strip is printing, a mechanical hum, and at the end the sound of paper dropping onto a hard surface.
The printing moment. A close-up of the Photoausgabe slot (“Hier in 5 Sekunden”), with the strip sliding out slowly.
Every strip is unique. Each frame gets its own exposure, grain and uneven development, and sometimes a light leak, a stain or a hair on the print. The frames sit slightly crooked and the edges are cut unevenly, like on a real machine.
Iterations
Developing effect → removed. I tried a strip that comes out blank and slowly develops. In testing, the empty strip felt like something had gone wrong. In real booths the photos come out finished, so I went back to that.
Saving on mobile. On phones, the download didn’t work. Now the button opens the native share sheet, so the strip can be saved straight to the camera roll or sent to a friend.
An exit. After the result I added a close button, so you can go back and simply look at the booth again without downloading or retaking.
Privacy by design
A photobooth sees people’s faces, so trust matters. Nothing is uploaded or stored: the strip is created in the browser and disappears when the page is closed. Even the fonts are self-hosted, so the page makes no requests to third-party servers. A short note on the page says this clearly.
Outcome
The photobooth is live and works on desktop and mobile. Testers’ first reaction was simply that it’s fun, and that’s the point: a small, playful souvenir that feels a bit like Berlin.
Next: animated transitions between the scenes, like walking up to the booth and then turning to the slot.