I have used the Next app primarily to submit photos from my camera roll. I find it easier to take photos with the native Camera app, especially as my workflow for invertebrates is often to take 10 or 20 images and then select and crop the best ones for upload. I didn’t use the old app much for making observations directly, and I’m unlikely to use Next much for that either, although I am likely to use it a lot more to upload photos rather than transfer them to the computer for web upload.
I may not be a typical user, but here are a few thoughts, some of which I have already shared via the feedback option within the app. There’s some overlap with previous contributors.
Things I like:
- The ease of adding up to 20 images at a time, and organising multiple photos into observations
- The little dots indicating how good to CV/AI suggestions are
- Filter options for exploring observations
- Notifications are visually clean and nicely laid out. I don’t miss seeing the user icons
- I like that the icons for Research Grade etc seem to subtly de-emphasize reaching Research Grade. This could help to reduce some undesirable behaviours
- Going to grid view, an improvement is the size of the images (compared to the grid in Explore on the old app)
- In Observation view, the image size is improved
- For audio recording, I like the helpful hints that appear under “?”
Factors that reduce my inclination to use the app directly for making observations:
- It launches into the AI camera, or a set of options which require a second tap on a cluttered screen. I’d prefer to be able to launch directly into the standard camera with no AI suggestions
- Having taken one photo with the AI camera, there is no evident way to add a second one. I prefer to take multiple photos of an organism (the standard camera is better in that regard and allows taking multiple photos)
- It’s more complex than it was before to delete selected images from an observation, and I cannot figure out how to reorder them, which was easy in the old app. I frequently want to put as the first photo a photo other than the first one I took
Suggestions for improvements:
- The @ symbol in front of usernames seems unnecessary clutter and could be removed
- The notification messages are longer and less informative. Instead of “bob suggested an ID: Polistes versicolor” now we have “bob added an identification to an observation by you”. I would prefer to see the identification rather than know if it’s my observation or someone’s else’s
- In the old app, it was clear when any new notifications had been loaded, and you could pull down and release to refresh. This process is more opaque in the Next app, and you have to just wait for a while to see if there are new notifications
- In my observations, the “Welcome back, user” text seems superfluous and takes up extra space. Remove?
- Both list and grid displays are too cluttered. In list view, the pin and clock icons are superfluous, as it’s clear that the text here refers to location and date/time. I’d suggest to remove the icons.
- Still in list view, I have my preferences set to display scientific name and two languages for common name. I’d suggest that’s too many in this view, but I want to keep that option for the site. You could display as much as fits on two lines (one for scientific, one for common) but not allow the names to flow onto a third line. Or allow a different preference for the app than that which is set for the site
- Still in list view, the icons for Needs ID, etc. are a bit too large and complex, I think, and you can’t click on them for an explanation. I’d suggest to make them less wide, remove the + and the tick mark, leaving only the one or two people. That would free up more space for taxon names. And there needs to be some way for new users to understand them, perhaps through onboarding
- Going to grid view, an improvement is the size of the images (compared to the grid in Explore on the old app) but there’s too much information layered on top of the images (number of photos, IDs, comments, various names). Better to remove most of it and provide just the name in the single preferred language. The rest can be accessed by clicking through to the observation
- In Observation view, I prefer the username and date/time above the image as in the old app. It helps to separate this info from that of identifiers
- Still in Observation View, again suggest to remove the @ from in front of usernames
- I agree with the person who mentioned that it’s hard to distinguish the community ID from individual IDs. When in Observation mode I’d be inclined to prefer seeing the Details tab, with the map, by default, rather than the Activity tab
- In Other Data, for an observation, it would be nice to be able to copy the link rather than just open it, but that may be a phone issue rather an app issue
- In Settings, rather than choose between AI camera and all options, I’d prefer a dropdown menu from which I could choose any of the options as my default, including the “all options” switcher
- In Explore mode, there’s too much clutter in the grid. Leave the information for list mode, and present just the photos and at most the preferred taxon name in grid mode
- If the AI camera can work offline, why can’t we have a dictionary of taxon names so we can manually add IDs offline too? If such a dictionary would be too heavy, perhaps it could be downloaded as regional packs, like eBird does, based on country checklists. I agree with others that not being able to add precise IDs when offline is a big negative
- I’ve noticed that sometimes the AI is “not confident”, but that all of the “other suggestions” it offers are, for example, beetles. Why can’t it offer beetles as the suggested ID?