Is an app to see the nearest observation wortwhile?

General
1

Hi everyone. This is about an app, but I’m not going to write the name here because this isn’t about promoting it; I just want to ask your opinions on its concept.

I’ve just started building an app that uses the iNat API to show the nearest observation to you at any time. It scans every few seconds to find and show the nearest observation to your location, while you’re walking outdoors. It then shows the pics, distance and date, common and scientific names, the observer, identifications, etc. So kind of like the single observation “screen” of the iNat app, but the difference being that it automatically updates every few seconds, and it just does that one thing (so super “light” app).

Do you think this is unique and valuable enough to be worth building?

I posted about it in the iNat subreddit, and a moderator said “iNaturalist already has a very similar capability, if you zoom in on your location in the map and then search the map area for nearby observations.” But to be honest, I can’t see anyone doing that and then keeping it open on that screen and refreshing it every few seconds… so I’m not sure if that’s a good comparison. Let me know if you agree or not.

Update: I realise that I didn’t explain the use case very clearly, resulting in some confusion about who would use this, when, and for what purpose :sweat_smile:

The idea is that someone who goes for a walk in a new location (or a location but don’t know much about) might want to know what sort of plants, animals, fungi etc. are seen in that area. They aren’t necessarily going to stop to look for the specimen (to reproduce the observation). Instead, they’ll look at their phone briefly to see the observation, marvel at the biodiversity in the area, then keep walking and look at their phone 10 / 20 / 30 seconds later to see the next one.

In other words, the intended user is a casual walker / hiker; not necessarily someone who has used iNaturalist much in the past. I expect them to use the app to enrich their walk, rather than to engage more thoroughly (at least at that time).

I am planning on adding some filters like selecting the observer, the dates (or at least by recency; e.g. within the past year), the taxon, etc. So even though the casual user might not use these, it might still be useful to you by using those filters.

Lastly to address the questions about traffic to the iNat API; that’s a valid concern, but I’m doing a few things to reduce how often it queries the API. For example, it caches all requests, so that it doesn’t make the same request if the user hasn’t moved much (e.g. if they haven’t moved more than 20m). And I’m planning to add a feature that does a single larger query to the API and just stores all the observations on the user’s device, so that it doesn’t need to re-query the API while the person is on their walk in that area; and that would enable offline use.

So to sum up; I don’t want to replicate anything that the iNat app already does; I want this to offer a new experience using iNat’s incredible data.

2

if it’s just displaying whatever the closest single observation is at any point in time, without allowing the user to specify any other parameters, it seems like this would be a bit pointless. what’s the point of knowing what the nearest observation is?

it would also be inefficient. outside of windows like City Nature Challenge or really populous areas with a ton of active iNaturalist users, there’s little reason to ping iNat every few seconds. ping it once a day maybe, if you really want to build an app like this.

you could probably increase the utility of the app by making it more configurable / adaptable. unfortunately, most of the unlocked use cases in my mind would be things adjacent to stalking or collecting, and i’m not sure it’s a good thing to unleash apps into the world that facilitate that sort of behavior.

3

with the places i go, the nearest observation is usually one of mine :laughing:

i’m not an app user, my phone tends to stay in my pocket out in the field. so it’s certainly not something i would consider.

4

I can see 3 issues that I’d want to address:

  1. Observations are dramatically un-uniform in their distribution, so at many popular locations, you’ll be within a few inches of hundreds of observations:

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While in many locations you’ll be miles away from any observation. I can’t see the “nearest single observation” metric being useful in either of those cases.

  1. Many users who don’t have GPS metadata on their photos will manually add a location by typing in the name of the place they were in and then increasing the accuracy circle to cover the whole place. This results in many places having dozens to thousands of observations with the exact same GPS coordinates in the system. So you’re going to have trouble defining “nearest single observation” when a thousand are equally near. The accuracy circle thing is also an issue because the point that shows up on the map isn’t even necessarily where the observation happened- it’s the center point of a circle in which the observation is said to have happened.
  2. Not all observations are equally “reproducible” based on the location alone, and reproducing the observation (ie finding the organism yourself) is presumably the main use case for something like this. For example, if I’m standing where someone saw a patch of some plant that grows in April but it’s currently September, that’s not useful information because the plants aren’t there now. Similarly, mobile animals are generally unlikely to show up at the same place repeatedly. But an observation of a tree, for example, can be repeated successfully at any time if you know where it is. So I’d want to see at the very least an ability to filter by date and taxon, because while the question “what plant grows here now” might be one of interest, the question “what’s the nearest thing to me that’s ever been seen” is probably less commonly asked.
5

I do look for recent dragonfly observations in my area. It’s fairly easy to do with the iNaturalist website using the general “dragonflies and damselflies” and a county entry. I do wish it were a little bit easier because the fields are small on my phone even if I zoom in. But it is fairly easy to already.

I don’t know if anyone would be interested in seeing all recent observations. I think most users are targeting specific categories even if they are open to finding anything while they are outside.

6

You have to add filters, the app I used today could e.g. filter on icon taxa, recent observations, rare observations (this property is not available in iNaturalist, but the most important one), distance from your current location and except your own observations.

Screenshot_2026-05-31-18-31-38-725_org.obsmapp
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After reading most recent posts I have to admit I also had to add the report! Is shows distance and direction…

8

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I really appreciate how intensely you’re engaging with this. And I’m taking the critique very seriously; very much considering if it’s still a good idea. I hope my update to the post answers your questions and concerns… but I’ll certainly continue to engage with your feedback!

9

I can imagine being interested in what has been observed nearby, but I doubt that something which only showed the single closest observation would be something I would be interested in. (Also, I’d be more likely to just look it up on iNat before going on a hike than messing around when I was out in the field, possibly with no internet access anyway.) Not trying to be critical - but you did ask. :-)

10

I have a friend who, when she travels, she goes into iNaturalist and prints out a list of native plants in the area where she is going to be along with thumbnails. She then brings that with her so she can be on the look out for those plants. Not sure if she is printing all of them or picking and choosing the from the list those that she might want to look for.

We also sometimes print out thumbnails of some of the more interesting native plants when we take kids out on the Oregon dunes so they can be on the lookout for them.

I realize this is sort of different than what you are doing, but maybe you would find it interesting to hear some ideas of how people are using this data when out and about.

11

I think one feature that might be interesting is to provide the distance for each species from the observer. E.g. if you live in Scranton, PA, how far would you have to go to see snow trillium?

But it certainly wouldn’t need to be updated in real time.

One feature that could also be interesting is: what is the nearest unobserved species to you? could be filtered by taxa - e.g. nearest bird, nearest, dragonfly, etc.

that would be more interesting to power users, which I understand is not your target audience.

12

I could see this being valuable as a feature of iNaturalist. Mainly that the observations used in the data pool would be limited to the last month or two of observations. All other data would be thrusted into the archive so even in the event that there ARE few recent observations you can still “expect” to see “these taxa” wherever you are.
Using the seasonality data and limiting your location size as you would in a “custom boundary” in the map feature is basically where I see that culminating.

That way seasonality corresponds in real time. Basically said: you could JUST track When blooms and migrations occur and in stead of doing that leg work selecting each individual taxa the app would basically tell you to “expect” things as they bloom and migrate.

If you were told that migrating butterflies were in your area for example, you might follow that up via these channels.

13

I don’t have too much advice to give unlike everyone else here, but I just wanted to chime in that I am definitely the target audience and would use this app if it works well. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours walking around Jepson Prairie Preserve (rare vernal pool habitat) trying to find species that I haven’t observed yet, which mostly consisted of squinting at my phone and messing around with filtering map location, time of year, switching back and forth between iNat and Google Maps, all while trying to chart out a relatively “nearest-to-me” path so that I don’t have to double back on myself. I don’t think this is only for casual hikers; I’m an avid user and this would be perfect for finding cool observations I would’ve otherwise missed and rounding out my species counts.

In terms of features, it would be useful to be able to filter for both recency and time of year (like within a month of the current date, but going back a certain number of years in case no one’s observed it yet this year), as well as species I haven’t observed yet. Being able to see where the nearest observations on the map are relative to where I am and where I’m facing would also be greatly useful, so I can navigate myself to them without having to open the location up in a third-party mapping app.

It occurs to me that this app/feature would be much more useful for plant and fungi observations than animals – getting told that there was an otter spotted in the area a few weeks ago is more of a fun fact than anything else, but a rare plant found a few weeks ago is definitely worth a visit.

14

@jayjt That’s great to hear! I’m definitely planning to add filters to make it useful for people like you :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
The app is called Nearby Nature, and currently it’s in closed testing, which you can join if you like (just let me know). Otherwise I’ll let you know when it is published.