by Jessy Ma, NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates intern, Brown University One of my main projects this summer was to design and develop a mobile companion app for macroinvertebrates.org. Initially, I had to decide whether to make a reference app that would essentially give information like the website does or make a game that would allow people to practice identification. I got feedback from my mentors, and at this point I had also started conducting usability tests for the alpha version of the website, so I got a feel for what users would use the site for and what was most important to them. I decided to do a reference app that would be a simplified offline version of the site, since this would be most helpful to people doing identification out in the streams, where Wi-Fi and cellular service can be unreliable. In order to scale the site down into a mobile app that can be used offline, I had to figure out which features on the site were most important to include and how to include them without compromising user experience. I iterated my design a few times based on feedback from my mentors and from website usability tests, and once I was happy enough with the design, I conducted usability tests with the Young Naturalists at Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Here is an example of how one screen (the full specimen view) changed throughout the process: The changes I made after the Young Naturalists' feedback are the final iteration displayed on my poster, which I presented at a poster session with all the other HCII summer REUs. After I had already submitted my poster, I had a meeting with the designers of the website and made further changes to the prototype, which can be found here: https://marvelapp.com/db804b9/.
Because it has yet to undergo usability testing, the current design is not final. Next steps would be to do more usability tests on the prototype, make any necessary changes again, and finally develop the app. I had started development using React Native, a framework created by Facebook for building apps using JavaScript and React. However, the design has changed drastically, my time on this project is ending, and I am a beginner to app development, so the best way for this app to be built successfully is if someone with app development experience takes over. Once we find that person, they will pick up where I left off and hopefully turn my design into reality. by Jessy Ma, NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates intern, Brown University I conducted 8 usability tests for the alpha version of macroinvertebrates.org. Participants consisted primarily of people who had previously expressed in a survey that they were interested in usability testing for the website, so most of them were relatively advanced in macroinvertebrate identification. My interviews were conducted in four main parts: opening background questions, unguided exploration of the site, site tutorial, and closing questions. Overall, participants gave positive feedback. Some of them had used the older version of the site, and others were seeing macroinvertebrates.org for the first time. Most thought the site was easy to use and especially liked how interactive and high-quality the photos were.
Many suggestions for improvements to the site were made, shown below. The most commonly suggested changes were adding tooltips (hover boxes) to the set of view control buttons in the upper right, making the blue plus sign more intuitive, making the expanded character list more noticeable, and making the flip arrow button more intuitive. Many of these usability issues could be solved by having a site tutorial video or popup tutorial boxes to guide users through the site when they visit for the first time. Certain features of the site that often went unnoticed or were hard to find, such as the blue plus sign, expanded character list, and flip arrow button, would benefit from redesign. Changes were constantly being made to the website, so some features had already changed by the time I conducted my last usability test. For example, the expanded character list was moved to the Diagnostic Characters tab, and glossary hyperlinks were added to the overviews and expanded character lists. Some people requested that certain information be added to the site. Multiple people wanted a ruler/scale to show size reference, more information about life span and different life stages, and location/distribution maps. People also pointed out that the site’s information is so thorough that it may be overwhelming for beginners. Overall, however, people were very happy with the site, said it would be useful to them in their work, and were excited to share it. by Jessica Roberts, postdoctoral research fellow, Carnegie Mellon University Over the past few months we have been incorporating ideas and feedback from all our project partners into an expanded version of macroinvertebrates.org, which will now feature 150 specimens in nine orders of the class Insecta. We engaged an amazing information design team from Dezudio to help us create a site that shows off the beauty of these animals while guiding noticing of key diagnostic characters. The expanded site will go live later this spring, but here's a sneak peek at the new interface!
Hello! Joyce again, from the REU program at Carnegie Mellon University. This summer I spent a lot of time thinking about how macroinvertebrates.org should handle search returns. An important step in this process was to understand how other scientific databases online were handling this functionality. From the Encyclopedia of Life website (eol.org), I found a particularly interesting search ability that could be well-applied to macroinvertebrates.org. When searching for information on Encyclopedia of Life, search returns are categorized into the following "types": Taxa, Images, Videos, Sounds, Articles, Traits, Links, People, Communities, Collections, and About EOL. All types of information are shown initially, but the user can narrow down the list of results by clicking on specific types. This seemed very applicable to macroinvertebrates.org, especially once we customize our "types" of information. After discussing within our team at CMU and speaking with Maddie, we chose the most important "types" to be: Taxa, Glossary Terms, Characters, Images, and Videos. We concluded that these categories best cover the information that volunteers would immediately want to find. Below you'll find several mockups I created, displaying how a volunteer might search for specific information. Example A: The user is searching for general information about mayflies. Search results of all types are returned (in the mockup, we see Taxa, Image, and Video types explicitly represented). Example B: The user has a general idea of what a tarsal claw is, but wants to see examples on macroinvertebrates. By filtering for "Characters", the search page only displays specimen Gigapans that feature tarsal claws as ID characters. The thumbnail displayed is a zoomed-in image of that character. Hello! My name is Joyce Chen. I recently joined the Learning to See project, and one of my tasks has been to design exercise to explore what the macroinvertebrates.org homepage might look like using a Zoomable User Interface (ZUI) approach. The idea was to create a large-scale Gigapan that would incorporate all of the different orders in the collection. The homepage would mimic a larger draw or musuem collection of insects. This also let's us see overall scope and scale of the collection based on the 150 taxa we plan to represent. We recognize many usability issues with this approach, but think it provides some interesting points for team discussion. To get more familiar with the project and the collection size, I started by simply organizing the different genera and families within each order. My goal was to better understand the distribution of information, particularly the different order and family sizes. By re-formatting the spreadsheet as shown, I was able to get a much better sense of the sizes of different groups. In addition, I took a quick count of the total number of orders, families, and genera. After these initial steps, I moved on to the layout of the potential homepage gigapan. For my first version, I focused on 15 orders. I presented these in a 4x4 grid, with each order appearing as a square. Within each square, I included gigapans of 4 families within the order (fewer if less than 4 families/pictures available). I grouped the grid so that the Insecta orders were adjacent to each other and took up the central portion of the screen. On the perimeter of the Insecta group, I placed the smaller classes (Arachnida, Bivalvia, etc.). A small view of the Gigapan is shown below, and the full resolution image can be found at: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/3207a47d1c28943264442d96a541c138. Additionally, I created another mockup which represented all of the different families for each order. Since some orders were much larger than others, this did not create a perfectly even 4x4 grid system. However, I tried to maintain an overall order that would allow users to easily navigate. This mockup can be found at http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/6d78f8a2794618fd8fd01f41ca84897a.
Within the Coleoptera order, there were many genera that had separate information for adult and larval forms. After consulting some existing field guides and discussing with Maddie and Dr. Morse, I decided to split the order into 2 groups for future versions of this design. This was done in order to improve clarity for volunteers on the website, since the adult and larval forms have very different characters. I also revised these initial attempts by incorporating all of the orders in the collection. Since some of the orders only have one or two specimen, I grouped different orders together by classes and phyla. I still aimed to focus attention on the class Insecta (and especially the phylum Arthropoda), so I put the other three phyla on the right-most edge of the Gigapan. The 4x4 grid is linked here: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/dff36941681925114d70ce6a871f2077 The organized rectangle layout can be viewed below, or at full resolution on the Gigapan website: http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/5bcd13ccde5ffe7dc3efac7da5bee6ea by Tom Garncarz, REU Fellow Hello! Here's an update on my progress in creating an educational game to help teach learners how to identify different families of macroinvertebrates. Since my last post (which you can read here), I've decided on a proper design direction and have begun work on a digital prototype of the game. Before getting into it, everything below is in-progress and in-development and may not be fully representative of the final game. Game Overview deck link Design Direction After completing my pitch to the rest of the team, I received a lot of feedback on the direction of the game. There was a lot of positive noise about the mobile Tinder-esque card sorting game; team members felt that the primary interaction of swiping left or right was simple enough to easily introduce players to the game, while the anatomical questions were a good way to integrate the project's overall interest in teaching anatomical vocabulary into the game. Some key considerations were also made regarding progress in the game; if the game is to be used as a pre-test/post-test measure for new learners, how would progress and ability be recorded? Furthermore, are there ways to build this scoring mechanism into the structure of the game in a way that feels compelling and rewarding for players -- and doesn't fall into traditional gamification pitfalls in the process? With this feedback in mind, I went forward towards designing a digital prototype of the game as a means of exploring those design questions, while also building progress towards a final release. Digital Prototype Work on the digital prototype of the game, which is being built in Unity, has been progressing smoothly thus far. The primary interaction mechanism of touch-screen input to swipe cards left and right has been built, and the underlying infrastructure of allowing players to answer questions about the macroinvertebrates on certain cards is nearly complete. Once these two features are fully complete, work can begin on building out the scoring system for the game. I have already resolved that once players are able to fully identify a macro -- that is, narrow down their deck of cards to the point of having only one macroinvertebrate left -- they should be "given" that macro as a reward. This would entail being shown the macro full-screen, as well as some anatomical and categorical information about it -- order, genus, where it might be found in a water system, and so on. As such, the number of macros that players are able to "collect" and which ones were collected might serve trainers as a means of understanding what players were able to successfully identify and what they struggled with. Additionally, I intend to integrate a player-invisible scoring system into the game that tracks the total number of correct answers to questions versus incorrect answers. This would help to further contextualize each player's ability, and could serve as a comparative metric in a pre-test/post-test situation. Wrap-up Work on the game continues, and seems to be progressing well to meet the May deadline. There are still design considerations to be made, including how the game ought to respond to incorrect answers. Given that the prototype is nearing a functional state, I anticipate that I will be able to spend more time focusing on these aspects of the game in the coming weeks. Thanks very much for reading! Repository:
https://github.com/tgarncarz/macroinvertebrates/ Game Download info (Android) The .apk file on drive If you're on an Android device, install by simply downloading and tapping it. If your phone doesn't let you, you may need to enable installation of unsigned applications. Hello! My name is Tom Garncarz, and I’m a new member on the Learning to See project. My role for the next few months will be to design and develop an interactive game to help new learners better test their ability to identify macroinvertebrates and consequently, water quality. I will be posting occasionally to document my research and design process throughout the semester. Over the course of the past two weeks, I’ve been conducting secondary research and ideating on early designs for such a game. Given my unfamiliarity with macroinvertebrates prior to this project, my research has been primarily focused on developing a broader understanding of this domain from a scientific perspective. However, because I have the unique opportunity to teach myself a knowledge domain directly before creating a design to teach others, I can examine the materials I’m using to teach myself on a meta-evaluative level. The first section of this blog post will discuss the resources I’ve looked at, how they teach their content, and what insights I can derive from them towards the design of an interactive game. Research Guide to Aquatic Insects The first resource that I examined was the Izaak Walton League’s Guide to Aquatic Insects and Crustaceans. This book was recommended to me as a primer guide for getting familiar with the domain of macroinvertebrate research, and as such, it seemed like a logical place to start my investigation as well. The Guide is written largely in prose, and reads somewhat like a textbook. Different classes of macroinvertebrates are anatomically and contextually detailed, accompanied by black and white illustrations. Guide describes each of these organisms in terms of what anatomical features can be used to disambiguate it from similar-looking macroinvertebrates, which comes as a welcome feature for new learners. These descriptions, in conjunction with the provided illustrations allow for a high-level understanding of what features define each class of macroinvertebrate. However, because this resource is written in prose, it’s definitely designed to act as a book to be read front-to-back, rather than a field resource or a teaching tool to be quickly consulted. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it distinguishes Guide from some of the other resources to be mentioned in this post. Flashcards of Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America My next resource was the Voshell/Wright set of Macroinvertebrate flashcards, a set of flashcards that detail 30 different EPT insects. Each card has a large color illustration with a size key on one side, as well as information about its insect on the other. This information includes the insect's categorical info (phylum, class, order, etc.), as well as what visual features define it, what habitat it lives in, how it moves, and what its presence means in the context of water quality. There a couple of interesting features of these flashcards that set them apart as a useful resource; each card has a size key, indicating the range of possible size that each insect could be. Additionally, indicating not only the insect's visible features, but also its habitat and how it moves, is likely useful when attempting to identify insects in the wild. I do wonder if it'd be useful to have some sort of visual indicator of habitat, however; it's difficult to visualize habitats purely from text at times, and in the context of a training game, it would be good to train players on stimuli as close to the real thing as possible. Leaf Pack Macroinvertebrate Identification Flashcards I also looked at a series of macroinvertebrate-focused Leaf Pack flashcards as part of my research. These flashcards are similar in structure to the Voshell flashcards, with color photographs of each macroinvertebrate on the front and descriptions and information on the back. The backs of each cards are less verbose than the Voshell cards, but they also contain annotated black and white top-down illustrations of the insect in question. Key characteristics of each insect are bulleted and outlined. Additionally, the set contains a glossary card that details macroinvertebrate anatomical terminology, as well as a high-level, generic overview of macroinvertebrate anatomy with annotated illustrations. The presence of this glossary card is the most interesting thing about this set when compared to the Voshell flashcards; since the client has indicated that they would like learners to be able to talk about EPT with the appropriate terminology, this seems key. A game should strive to incorporate this (though it does run counter to the idea of a more visually-focused experience). Macromania! Since my role on the team is to develop a game, it seemed prudent to look into other efforts to create games around the topic of macroinvertebrates. Macromania! is a game about water quality determination by identifying cards with EPT on them. Each card has a black and white illustration of an insect on one side, and its common name, class, order, family, life stage, and pollution group on the other. Students are tasked with identifying these cards, then understanding whether their presence in certain ecosystems (farm, forest, or city) is indicative of what quality of water. I'm intrigued by the idea of categorizing insects by the ecosystems where they are found; because the game focuses primarily on water quality identification, this makes a lot of sense. It's definitely the most comprehensive teaching aid in terms of covering the entire process of water quality testing; it does seem to lack a little something to make it fun. However, taking players through the entire process (rather than just focusing on the EPT ID) is an interesting idea that might be worth exploring. Electrocity Electrocity is an online game in which players have to act as mayor of a virtual city and make meaningful decisions with regard to how the city is powered. Building different kinds of power plants can impact cities' productivity and electricity output, but can also impact the environment. Although it has little to do with macroinvertebrates, and its scope isn’t really possible given the development timeframe of a few months, it provides an interesting perspective on designing an educational game. Electrocity puts students in a position to learn through these very high-level actions; building rapport with these concepts because of their impact on the player's city (something the player cares about!) is an interesting way to make players want to learn. I wonder if something similar couldn't be done for our domain. Research Takeaways
Based on my research, I generated a few high-level takeaways as reference points for the design of my game. The first is that some way to introduce players to the terminology used to categorize and define macroinvertebrates is important. Because most trainers (and indeed, anyone else in the community) will likely refer to macroinvertebrates by these terms, it’s important that my game help players use these terms to describe and understand the subject matter. My second high-level takeaway was that providing a context in which learners must identify macroinvertebrates is important. Although the illustrations present on the Voshell flashcards and in the Izaak Walton guide are great for anatomical identification, it’s important to show that these organisms exist in a real-life context. Telling players that these organisms are usually found in a forested area feeding on leaf detritus, for instance, will help with field identification, as learners who have played the game will be able to narrow down their possibility space to something much smaller than if the macroinvertebrates were taught independent of some local context. Finally, water quality is a personal issue; my game should make it feel like one. Often times these kinds of tasks can seem too heavily abstracted to feel meaningful (its impact on memory notwithstanding, the Greeble recognition task comes to mind). It seems important that players, when identifying different macroinvertebrates with my game, be able to understand the significance of what they are doing. Tying this work to environmental health is key to making the task feel important and meaningful, and will hopefully encourage understanding of the weight of the real-life identification task as well. By Lauren Allen, LMDC
A few months ago, I posted an update outlining the data that have been collected for our cognitive task analysis study: http://seetolearn.weebly.com/blog/data-collection-update-taxonomic-experts-cognitive-task-analyses Today, I wanted to briefly share some themes from that work that will be talked about by the full team at future meetings and workshops. These themes are emergent, meaning that they surfaced from the massive qualitative dataset that we created by asking eight entomologists, taxonomists, and volunteer trainers to identify up to four unknown preserved specimens and two simulated specimens for our study. By Jen Liu In preparation for the website redesign, we are conducting in-depth background research on existing guides and keys for identifying macroinvertebrates. The goal of this research is helping us develop a framework that maps out the design techniques and learning strategies used to scaffold the identification process, and compare those approaches across multiple sources. This framework and inventory of solutions will help us reference and address challenges in the redesign process. Some of the guides and key we are using for this analysis include:
Our sources were selected to include a diverse range of users from novice identifiers to trained experts. This selection was made to reflect the range of users that we anticipate will be using our website.
By Bo Kim I created a matrix based on the 5 usability studies conducted with trainers from different organizations. The matrix focuses on the trainers' background, how they conduct trainings and challenges of training volunteers. It will be a useful reference to compare different training approaches of different trainers and organizations. Training materials from Georgia Adopt a Stream and MO Stream Team were also collected and uploaded in our shared drive folder.
Brief summary of the key findings: |
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