What if you could create a digital collage with a friend using pictures you take in real-time? Collage Party lets you pair up with your friend’s iPhone to do just that.
In an exploratory final assignment for their AI Foundations module, participants were tasked to use Claude and Xcode to create a native app that can be used by two or more people at the same time.
Party Collage leverages iPhones’ built-in feature that removes backgrounds in pictures so you can create cut-outs instantly from pictures without having to manually remove the backgrounds later.
So how do you use Collage Party? You can start a collage session from your app, prompting your friend to join the session from their app. Once the session has started, a timer sets off. Each person then takes pictures of items they want to add to a shared collage. Thanks to the iPhone’s background removal feature, the subject is lifted from the photo instantly, and you can preview it before adding it to your cut-outs or dismissing it. Each person can collect up to five cut-outs to be added to the shared pool of collage items.
Got all your collage cut-outs? You can then drag, twist and resize your own and your friend’s cutouts onto the shared collage canvas. But act fast! A new timer gives you thirty seconds to build your shared collage. The result is a fun, unique, and perhaps slightly chaotic collage created from pictures of what surrounds you and your friend.
Collage Party evolved from an earlier native app project (also for the AI Foundation course) that allows you to create a collage on your own without a timer. To improve Collage Party, the timing mechanics would require further thinking so each player can collect cut-outs at their own pace and build the collage together without feeling rushed. Removing the timers and letting each person collect cut-outs asynchronously and over multiple sessions would allow participants to fully enjoy the creative process of building a collage.
