Is the link to the web help resource broken on your app? Actually, it’s the webpage that has the broken link, but wondering if the page you’re directed to is broken like it is for me.
We particularly need a glossary since iNat has its own jargon. Where words have very particular meanings. Think of Wild and Casual. Not at all what they mean in casual conversation off iNat. That slug is … Wild in your dreams / nightmares? And the Wild lawn daisy, oh please!
Not easy to translate, like poetry, you need the meaning but then you lose sense of poetry.
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Ah, yes, there is that, too. It does indeed seem that the link on the webpage is broken.
It’s not something I’d looked at recently, to be honest. I was mostly concerned with the fact that it takes you out of the app in the first place instead of having info/help pages within the app. I imagine I’m not the only person who finds such redirects rather annoying, and deterring people from accessing the help pages seems less than optimal.
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The “Next” app that was recently released also has a menu with a link to the Help site. Unlike the main iNaturalist site, it is mobile optimized. This is good, but I don’t expect most new users will seek it out and read it. Video demonstrations a suggested above would certainly fill a niche, but wouldn’t reach the majority of new users, and might be expensive to localize.
I think we need tips inserted into the user experience when and where they would be useful. This kind of thing is often distracting and/or patronizing (think Clippy), and people have been well trained to dismiss anything popping up in their face without looking at it. But it’s possible to do well, even gracefully. Discourse, the software that runs this forum, provides some good examples.
It’s possible a “tutorial mode” would be effective for guiding new users through posting an observation or using CV to identify something without participating in the community.
I think game designers collectively have a wealth of experience in navigating these problems. Even minimal interventions could make a huge difference to users’ success and enjoyment in using the app, and their expectations of the community.
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