Additional Geotagger Features

On the whole, the social features developed for this work are fairly complete and representative of the abilities of the Geotagger system. However, certain features were disregarded because they were either deemed to have lower research potential for the user study or these features are not fully realized within the Geotagger system. Going forward, an effort should be made to integrate these features into the API and database backend prior to their addition to the mobile client.

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Custom Tag Attributes

Custom tag attributes were introduced during the design and implementation of the MySQL data store. Custom attributes allow for users to easily add their own attributes to the tag entity. This feature is primarily aimed at scientist users who may need to extend tags with additional information in order to provide a complete picture of the data being collected. This was not implemented as the standard fields found on a tag proved sufficient for the work accomplished in this thesis. Future work incorporating this functionality should devise a novel way for custom attributes to be displayed in the user interface. Special attention should be given to displaying these attributes on tag cards, giving users a concise, yet complete, representation of the tag. Lengthy lists of custom tag attributes could exist in some kind of popup or popover menu with visual context of the attributes.

User Roles and Collection Visibility

At present, user roles are largely unused in the Geotagger application. Visibility and user roles were statically assigned in an attempt to simplify that particular aspect of application development. For the purposes of testing and field research, tags and adventures were made available to all members. While this simplified development, it robs the application of a powerful feature. One that should certainly be present at the time of a full release. The database and API backend fully support the use of user roles and collection visibility, yet the documentation surrounding these features can be improved. Future emphasis should also be placed on more completely explaining the implications of these aspects to allow for easier development. Documentation should include a clear definition of each user role and visibility option, detailing their

use and effect.

Thought should be given to creating different views of the application that will only be accessible to adventure coordinators. A kind of administration panel may be helpful in setting up user groups, permissions, tag visibility, as well as moving tags between collections. This could be particularly useful in a classroom setting here a teacher may have to manage a group of children. Quickly and easily navigating between the various collections and groups available in the application would greatly ease a busy teacher’s workflow.

Groups

As a Geotagger feature, groups have yet to be implemented in any form. On the surface, groups appear to be similar to adventure member collections that are an existing feature. Adventure member collections serve to divide members based on their “role”. That is, scientist members may occupy one collection, while citizen members occupy a different collection. It is possible the types of tags between the two collections have different intentions. Groups, on the other hand, provide a way to group users within collections. This can be useful in a classroom setting where a teacher needs to separate children into different teams. These different teams might have separate objectives. One team might be tasked with finding tags around a body of water, while another team finds tags in a wooded area. Groups represent another tool that can be used by adventure coordinators to further organize and create interesting scenarios for adventures. Once groups are implemented in the system’s backend, the user interface should keep groups separate from member collections. These two concepts are easily confused and steps should be taken to alleviate this confusion.

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Friends

Although a simple concept, friends can prove to be difficult to implement. Geotagger has the concept of users, but currently there is no backend support for relationships between these users. Adding the a friends feature would further connect users to one another, thereby motivating collaboration. Tags and comments which have been authored by “friends” could have a different look or a visual affordance that would inform the user that this content has been contributed by a friend. Fischer [15] shows that users are more likely to continually contribute to a citizen science project if they feel that they have some kind of “stake” in the project. The friends system would make strides in providing further opportunities to grant users a stake in the Geotagger project.

Activity Page

An activity page would give an overview of relevant Geotagger activity to the currently logged-in user. This could include tags and comments posted by friends, as well as other users which are members of any of the user’s adventures. This page would largely act as a sort of “news feed” common in social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Giving users a synopsis of user activity in the Geotagger project would show them, at a glance, what people are doing, seeing, and going. This page could also include buttons to add a tag of their own, reply to comments, or view other locations that a user may have been. An activity page would serve to give users a sense of “community”. Fischer [15] shows that users greatly value feeling a sense of belonging and community. This activity page would afford users instant context as to what has been happening in the project during their absence. This page could

aid users in feeling that they are a part of a larger community, all of whom share an interest in the natural world around them.

Enhanced Chat Features

At the time of this writing, the adventure chat functionality is somewhat limited. The adventure chat provides a real-time instant messaging experience, but users are limited to sending only text-based messages. It is not uncommon for modern instant messaging applications to allow users to send a variety of media to other recipients. For example, Facebook Messenger allows users to send animated images, video, and even money. Slack, another popular messaging system, allows for the transmission of zipped archive files, source code snippets, and video. While it is not expected that Geotagger account for all of these features, extending the text-based functionality would give users tools for novel and more meaningful interactions. Adding the ability to send images would allow users to share things that they see in nature without the need to create a different tag. Images could also help users provide others with illustrations of where they are. Sending locations would help users communicate their current location or the location of an interesting landmark. Additionally, a user could send an “inline tag” which could combine these elements and create a compact tag representation within chat. A further feature could include a button that would allow the authoring user to automatically create a tag from the inline one present in the chat. These features would serve to give users interesting interactions with the Geotagger project, thus making their conversations more environmentally-focused than what can be accomplished with simple text-based messaging.

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