Would be useful when using iN app to add very basic IDs to the new observations without typing taxon names or without waiting for auto-suggestions (internet not always available). In the field time is a factor, I would like to spent minimum time adding each observation, in such case I could make more observations, as well as some other useful activities. But if to leave it without any ID then nobody gonna ID it (at least in my region), experts subscribed to their groups. So I’m usually typing very basic IDs when making observations, like “plantae”, “fungi”, “insecta”, “araneae”, etc (even if I know more exactly if more exact names are longer or if I don’t remember exact spelling). I would save some time if there would be shortcuts in some form, like icons with 11 basic “categories” of organisms used in the search and lifelist on iN. Even better if it would be possible to add manual shortcuts, as their usefulness would depend on the region and one’s interests. For example I’m observing a lot of lichens, nearly all of which are Lecanoromycetes, and such shortcut would be very useful for me, as I obviously don’t want to type “Lecanoromycetes” each time in the field.
For what it’s worth, before we added computer vision there were iconic taxa buttons in the mobile apps that you could tap on to add a coarse ID. I’d personally be for returning those, but it could complicate the new observation flow and would need to be thought through.
3 Likes
I know users of the iNaturlist app are complaining that a ‘recently used’-list is missing. That could be a solution for this problem.
3 Likes
Another possibility would be user-defined shortcuts. Some users would want these for coarse IDs like plant/fungi/insect, but others might use (some of) them for very common species.
Much of the usefulness of this would be subsumed by a recently-used list though.
3 Likes