Hi, apologies if this is the wrong place to discuss this but I’m wondering if anyone else is dumbfounded by the new update on the mobile app.
Completely removing the edit observation screen from the default experience in favor of making the app function identically to Seek just seems like a really poor decision from my perspective. Doing this gives users no way to add notes, fix/obscure location, or check the captive/cultivated box, just whisks the photo away to be posted immediately. Under the default settings, you can’t even add more than one photo to an observation!
Obviously, you can go into the settings and change it back to the “classic” (functional) mode, but I imagine most people will not, and the platform will get filled with poor quality or incomplete observations. Am I missing something here? This as well as the increased prominence of AI in iNat’s branding make me worried for its future.
I generally agree with your main point here, in that I personally dislike the ‘simple’ mode being the default one for the new app (when I run iNat workshops, one of the first things I do is to show participants how to toggle on ‘advanced’ mode). However, a few points of clarification
First:
this is not actually true. When I toggle my app off advanced mode right now and use the default settings, take a photo, and then hit the ‘save’ button, the record does not get uploaded immediately. It actually sits in a pending mode that looks like this:
if you tap on the record, it then allows you to do all of the things that you mentioned, namely both
and
it isn’t until you actually then click upload that the record is pushed through. Is it necessarily intuitive to users that they can edit the record during this pending stage? Possibly/probably not. But the functionality is there (not to mention these edits and additions can also be done after the record is uploaded, not only during), I think it just needs to be better signposted (perhaps an explicitly labelled ‘edit’ button on the pending observation)
Second:
the new app has been live for iOS users for getting close to a year and a half now, and at least in the cross-section of records that I review (Australian records), I haven’t seen any perceptible decrease in observation quality or completeness. My single personal experience is certainly not representative of iNat at large, but low quality and incomplete observations have always been uploaded to iNat, including through the browser/not with any iteration of the app, and I haven’t really seen an increase in these types of observations that has coincided with the new app
Third:
I’d like to gently push back against this. I don’t think the development of a single demo of new AI functionality (assuming this is what you’re referring to), that may or may not even be retained in future, can be accurately characterised as ‘increased prominence of AI’ in iNat’s branding.
To your first point, I did miss that the edit screen was still accessible, but I do agree that it needs to be more clear to the user. Editing retrospectively just makes everything more inconvenient.
To your second, I’m specifically referring to this new change that was sent out 1 week ago- the new app had been fine up to that point. It’s true that low quality observations have always been uploaded, but it seems like the Seek-ified app is actively encouraging them.
Lastly, what I mean by increased prominence of AI is that they have centered the AI identification feature and sidelined everything else, in a way that’s very reminiscent of Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc. Even the forums now have AI “summarize” and “Ask AI” plastered all over them. This type of thing is alienating to a lot of people, especially the generative AI features.
could you clarify which change this was. The simple, Seek-esque mode being the default is not a new change, it’s been that way for a quite a while. Looking at the summary of the changes from last week’s update (see screenshot below), I can’t quite see what change you’re referring to. Indeed, this latest change actually made the default mode less Seek-like, and more aligned to what you’re hoping for, as users can now press and hold the AI camera button to instead select the option to create a multi-photograph observation straight away (but again, I think this needs to be made more obvious).
just to clarify, the iNat forum uses Discourse; the underlying forum software is not something created by or run by iNat. Those AI summarise buttons are a feature implemented by Discourse, not iNat staff, and they’ve existed for a number of years now
thanks for clarifying. Like I said above, I don’t like that this mode is the default and would much prefer it to be the opt-in mode.
The recent and much discussed blog post by @kueda highlighted his disagreement with iNat’s leadership over (many things including) the decision to try to combine the functionality and audience of Seek and iNat Classic into a single new app. I am willing to speculate that the choice to have the more Seek-like mode be the default was made on the assumption that users who want that (introductory) mode are also less likely to figure out how to change modes. One clear downside of trying to put it all in one app is that making the default as simple as possible also hides most of the functionality, as you describe.
Could you expand a bit on what you mean with last update? Could you tell me the version number you had prior to the update, and which version number you updated to?
Could you tell me what has changed in the app that makes you feel there is no edit observation screen? Could you add some screenshots to what you are seeing, please?
We did actually add another entry point to the edit observation screen in the last updates. In the “default” mode for an observation that is only saved but not uploaded yet you can now press the pencil icon in the top right of the observation’s details screen to get to the edit observation screen. It is possible we introduced a bug in the existing flows with our ongoing efforts to improve the app for our users.
Unrelated to this question, but we are currently working on another entry point to the observation edit screen directly from the screen after you took a photo or added one from the gallery in “default” mode.
I agree.It is disappointing as there are few benefits and now the old app is even better than the new ne. But also with the website i see more changes except the computer vision, who has improved. In the old days you could copy an observation and get all te information with it as removing is much easier than adding it again later.
Is stead of easier, the new app is more difficult in adding photos
