Yes, and I’ve done so for my -own- observations.
But, I do not seem to get any notifications for IDs I made on other users’ observations on Next. So, I cannot know if a withdrawal is needed except by checking the website.
I had another topic about this and that’s what another user explained. On Next, you only get notifications for your own obs, but not for ids made on others’ observations.
Is that so?
That would be an amazing feature!
Yes i’d love to see this and it even opens the door to tagging more than one species in a photo! For instance a bee on a flower - the algorithm could identify both. Or a photo of several trees in a forest where it can identify more than one.
Correct, that’s the current behavior. What you wrote was:
If one wants to react to notifications about IDs you made for others (e.g, Withdraw an incorrect ID ), you still need to do so on the Website, which is inexplicable to me.
The word “react” and your specifically mentioning “withdraw a correct ID” made me think you were only referring to the action part, not the being notified about your ID part.
I think you meant to write “incorrect”. So, yes.
I try to be responsible about withdrawing my incorrect IDs, and I appreciate anything that makes it easier.
Speed is important, other apps are faster but often has smaller pics. (Naturgucker was very slow but has had huge photos in those days, i thougt you could add an unlimited Flickr)
I tried the app for the first time today, and here is my impression of the current flow. I had good cell service where I was hiking today, which is not necessarily typical.
I think the app is promising for eventually improving my workflow where I take a bunch of photos offline and then either upload them eventually later or forget. But to make it viable to use while hiking I think a few steps need to be rearranged or faster.
Usually, when hiking with someone who doesn’t stop for me to take pictures, I snap a few photos of a plant as quickly as possible and jog to catch them. If they are hiking at close to the maximum speed I can sustain, every second I fall behind can take me several seconds to catch up, and become increasingly uncomfortable the longer I have to sustain an increased speed. Right now, the workflow to add multiple photos has a pause in the middle that requires me to stay close to the plant and makes this more difficult.
First, I click the camera, then snap a photo, then it takes a few seconds to run the CV, I select an option, it now takes a lesser amount of time to load the taxon page, where I have to confirm that option, then click the camera again, can now snap several photos in a row, then I have to accept the photos and submit.
I would like some kind of sticky option to just open into the multi-photo taking page initially, and without the extra clicks. I can theoretically do the ID clicks while jogging to catch up, so even if it takes almost the same total time to add an observation this way, it will be more comfortable in practice (less jogging).
A second connected issue is that while hiking, sometimes I may be breathing hard and/or in areas with significant glare from the sun, which makes it difficult to read or see and click small buttons in the interface (especially if I have to do it while jogging to catch up with someone). This makes it difficult to make a meaningful selection from the CV pane in that moment, even if I know the correct option and it is there, and especially if I do not immediately know the correct option. So barring a draft mode/placeholder workflow, I anticipate that it makes it so the default option will be to just click the top CV option and review it later, which I don’t think is necessarily ideal.
Also is there a way to add the ID without the mandatory click through and loading of the taxon page? That will just add time, especially in areas with poor quality to no cell service. Does it work in airplane mode? When I lived in Montana I frequently was 30 miles from any cell service at all.
I really like the new app. I don’t upload observations from my phone (prefer to upload from computer), so my experiences are of a pretty light user.
That said, the CV confidence dots are great—I hope they make it to the web interface at some point. Would prefer explore page to default to observations rather than species (both these points were brought up above).
Overall the new design/interface is great, though I admit when I first saw the new ‘my observations’ tab (default list view) it felt very busy. I think I’ve adjusted to it (and appreciate the added detail), though I still feel the little ‘RG banner’ (with the two people) is a bit superfluous—couldn’t you just have the shield thing (with # of IDs) turn green to indicate RG? Or maybe I’m missing something about what it conveys.
I got stumped for a little while figuring out how to take a sound recording, but I probably set the observation button to default to the AI camera and then forgot about it? Got it eventually.
By the way, is there any way to download the sound file of a saved (un-uploaded) audio observation? I made my first bird call recording (I’m a complete novice with birds), but would prefer to at least take a stab at IDing it myself (rather than just do ‘Aves’), and for that I’d prefer to get the audio from the app onto my computer to listen, and then upload from there.
We have had this extension since June 2020 ish
iNaturalist Enhancement Suite
You will want to upload that audio fast! We think the app erases unuploaded audio after 24 hours. It’s a bug they’re working on!
That’s a neat-looking extension, thanks! Might have to switch back to chrome again…
Was going to say, “mine’s still there,” but yes you’re right, the audio’s gone, haha. Oh well! Probably better for the way I do observations to capture audio from a different app that I can then get onto my computer.
The more upfront integration with CV and the “Seek-style” camera is what slows down much of this app.
I understand the vision. The functionality is cool, combining technology of Seek and iNaturalist, and it’s a way to attract new audiences. However it diminishes efficiency of the platform for many of us at best, and is an outright handicap at worst.
In the old app, the camera was quick. You could take a photo and promptly move to the observation page. In the new app, the camera takes time to load. Then the inputs are slowed apparently due to CV. When the photo button is pressed, it takes extra time to take the photo. Then, it freezes after for a few seconds to “load” the observation screen. While testing this in the field, I actually missed several good observations because the camera either loaded too slowly, or didn’t take a photo until long after I pressed the button and the critter had left.
Problem 2 is once a photo is saved, the snappy process of saving an observation is now gone. In the old app, once you save a photo you can just hit “save” and move to another observation. In the new app, you are forced into the observation label with the CV suggestions, which takes seconds to load, or worse stalls longer or crashes in low reception conditions. There is a “Add ID later” skip button, but it can’t be pressed while the app is frozen loading CV. And if you tried to press this during that, once CV loads, it’ll kick the “Add ID later” button off screen and register your button press as one of the selections. Then you have to repeat the process to fix it, it’s obnoxious and slow.
I am a well-versed user of iNaturalist. For many people like me, our focus is gathering data and observing, and we don’t desire being tied up in fancy shiny app functionality if it slows things down. In addition, CV is useless for many of us who frequently make observations of species not recognized by CV. Having the CV forced in my face in two places (during the camera, and then after taking a photo) is very undesirable. The old app did this better, not having a camera tied up in CV, and not forcing us into CV the moment we saved a photo.
The new app aimed to improve the existing interface and features, which it has done in part. But at the same time, it decided to pull in extra functionality from Seek that many of us did not ask for, and at the least do not desire in our workflow. If this is the path iNaturalist is taking, then I greatly encourage that options between the “faster, simpler observation” and “colourful, awesome observation” methods are provided.
If any feedback is being considered, then I have the following:
1- A way to disable the “Seek” style camera and just let us use the camera as normal. It’s neat functionality but a detriment to an efficient observation process, both for photographing “fast” organisms but among time commitments in general. (edit: seems to be present already, see below)
2- Return or provide the option of the “old” functionality of having a saved photo take you to the observation detail screen, with the “save observation button” available right away. Instead of forcing us to go into the CV/label application first.
Effectively, options to “turn off” the very things that stall this app so much for many of us. The forced CV in suggestions and in the camera itself.
If you go to Settings you can add more observation options, which include a “standard” camera, but one that can take and save multiple photos at a time before saving an observation. See https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000197407-how-to-use-the-inaturalist-next-standard-camera
This is great, although I see the settings page does not load for some reason (it just freezes with an infinite “loading” circle, perhaps my 3/4 bars of reception are not enough, I’ll try it on wifi later).
As an addendum to this – why do the settings require internet connection to change? Perhaps it just happens when you try and change taxon names display. I’m going to guess maybe it doesn’t have the two primary names loaded in the memory (default common and scientific)…?
I’d also like to point out a problem I have with many new versions of apps, which is that everything is so huge. This means far less observations are shown in the “list” compared to the old one, and the same applies to the “explore” tab replacement which only shows 6 at once versus the “old” which showed a doubled 12 or 15 at once.
The settings that don’t require an Internet connection will not be behind a spinner in the next release.
We’ll discuss adding an option to remove Suggestions from the observation creation flow for users who value efficiency, but no promises.
The interface looks nice, and it’s convenient to be able to check people’s profiles on mobile, but I find the more species-specific CV to be pretty inconvenient. Also, it takes a bit longer to check observations within specific areas of the map, and I really didn’t find the icon button for Observations/Species/Observers/Identifiers to be very transparent (plus it’s pretty small). I tend to just use the original app on my phone and only use Next if I want to check someone’s profile or look at something like species stats.
Can you explain this in more detail? It would be helpful to know what you find inconvenient about it.