Is anyone else disturbed by the number of single photo observations that seem to appear with greater regularity since the new iNaturalist for ios was introduced? I think it’s because if a user identifies using the camera, then it makes it easy to upload that photo as an observation – but doesn’t make it easy to add additional photos (or even encourage the user to do so). If I’m the only one who’s finding this challenging when making identifications, then I don’t want to make a feature request, but if others are bothered by it, I will. Thanks for your feedback!
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On iOS, you can group the photos based on individual organisms in the next stage after uploading. I personally feel like this feature makes it easy to add multiple photos per observation - but to your point, do you think that it may be better if they made this function more clear? I do still see people uploading like 15 photos of the same organism that were clearly taken at the same time, but presented with 15 different observations.
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I don’t think single photo observations are in and of themselves a problem. Some organisms are easily identifiable with a single image of varying quality. If there is a particular taxa you are attempting to ID but one image isn’t enough you can comment that and request more images or suggest which parts of the organism need to be photographed for identification.
Additional functionality I would like to see is requiring certain images for specific taxa (ex: tree identifications need bark, leaf (if possible), overall image of the tree, fruit, flower) but that is just incredibly unrealistic. So the best option is to just inform people when you come across the observations where one image isn’t enough.
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It would be nice if the app could recognize this and say “hey these images look similar, should they be one observation?” and give you the option there.
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On the new iNat app (which I’ve stopped using b/c it kept freezing), I just found it harder to add extra photos. I figured out how to do it (and then forgot & had to relearn it), but if the observation was easily identifiable with one photo, I just didn’t bother.
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Does anyone ever access their iNat records on the website using their phone and attach photos that way from your phone photo library? Basically you avoid using the app to add additional pics. Seems to work for me.
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I do this regularly, yes – but it seems a little bizarre that even on one’s phone, it’s often easier to actively avoid using the actual iNaturalist phone app.
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This is why I still use iNat Classic
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Something I realized recently is that the multi photo upload on iNat only exist if you have turned on advanced mode, which is off my default. I learned this when I was showing my mom how to do some things and realized her’s was entirely different. While I understand the purpose of leaving advanced mode off by default, it results in a lot of people not even knowing it’s there. I think the name “Advanced Mode” may even scare people off. I definitely think the app could benefit from making the multiphoto upload available by default. Without it, it’s basically just the Seek app.
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I think you’ve “hit the nail on the head”. The advanced mode allows for grouping multiple images very easily. I do this routinely on a morning or evening walk in the neighborhood. Take several photos. Open the (new) iNat app, choose “Upload photos” (from my photo library), selected a bunch of them (even multiple species), group them as I wish, “Import Observations”, then Save the observation(s). Takes maybe 10 seconds. The only slow part for me is trying to Upload when I’m walking in an area without a strong cell signal so I normally don’t choose “Upload Now”, but rather just Save the observations and wait until I get home to a strong wi-fi signal to upload.
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same! for so many reasons. I want to like the new one - but I really, really don’t. It makes some things so much more difficult.
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Technically this isn’t true - if you press and hold the camera button in standard mode you can see all new observation options. And when a user first starts on the app, they’re told to try that out to learn it’s possible. But yes, you’d have to remember this option if you’re in standard mode.
In my experience, in advanced mode, the new app is much easier to use than classic for almost everything (barring the slowness issues some users are experiencing). May I ask where exactly the pain points are for you?
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I have noticed that some very new users absolutely understand how to access their phone’s image library to upload their photos from the native camera app… but they don’t understand the grouping features at all. I’ve started to notice more and more users grouping all the photos from their session together into one observation which should probably have been 5+ separate single-photo obs. I’ve been going through a lot of city nature challenge “Unknown” backlog observations and other event observations over the last month, and every single session I see someone whose observation must be marked casual because they did not understand the photo grouping flow. Because it’s actually a lot of work to manually combine all the photos using that screen, I suspect they may have seen that page as a confirmation screen asking them whether they wanted to upload all their photos, rather than a page used for separating photos into observation groupings.
Most of these people are under 100 observations, clearly first-time users, and don’t have other activity aside from a specific event’s participation. Not sure what can be done to help them… I can imagine some UX solutions for this to make the upload process “idiot-proof” for very new users, but I suspect that some of these may be reading comprehension issues, since the grouping screen has text on it that is pretty direct about its purpose.
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I did not know that an advanced mode was available, and I’ve been a fairly regular user for three years now. Thank you for pointing out this feature.
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I think the ‘Advanced Mode’ being off by default is a big part of it - people just don’t realize what they’re missing. Maybe we could suggest a feature where the app recognizes similar timestamps/locations and asks if they should be grouped? In the meantime, I’ll just keep tagging them with helpful tips on what extra parts to photograph!
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The app doesn’t work for me (current IOS, 13 mini) and hasn’t. Most of the time it doesn’t respond at all to any touch. Just tested to try and observe by adding multiple photos. Couldn’t combine them by dragging. No obvious way to do it otherwise and the only button that responds is the trash button. So, I use classic for small amounts of uploading, and the web to do most things.
PS I have the current app version.
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Yes, I do. I’d like to group them before I upload and don’t at all appreciate having to get intimate with the software to work out what should be easy. I mostly take photos with a camera but would like to put up suitable images directly from the phone.
FYI: If something is easy if you know how to do it but it’s not the default and there isn’t an obvious label saying how to do it, it’s not easy. Either make the easy and effective alternative very easy to find or admit that it’s something only being made available to a select few.
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Thank you for this Post. I did not know about Advanced Mode. I turned it on and it’s much easier to upload multiple photos now.
I’m not particularly disturbed. You can ask them to add more photos if — you feel as though it would help with a definitive ID.