Link to Alberta Wildflowers - Wildflower Indentification App
Alberta Wildflowers - Wildflower Identification (Click "Device Frame" to view the app)
Highlight Walkthrough
Task 1: Identifying a wildflower
Users have the option to identify wildflowers using either photo recognition or manually selecting characteristics of the wildflower.
Identifying by photo recognition
Identifying by photo recognition
When identifying using photo recognition, the user positions the camera to get the wildflower in the view of the green box. Then they press the white circle to take the photo, and the system attempts to identify the wildflower. We modeled our camera screen after existing smartphone camera screens (round button in the bottom middle of the frame) so that it is familiar for the users to use.
Identifying by manual selection of characteristics
Identifying by manual selection of characteristics
When identifying by manually choosing characteristics, the user touches a characteristic to apply the filter and hopefully narrow down the possible matches. At any time, they can click on the Results button at the bottom of the screen to see the matches from the filters applied so far. One of our research findings was that people don't always know what words mean, or they don't know what words to use to describe something, so we chose to display the selectable filters as images with the small text underneath (as opposed to text alone) to make the characteristic easier to recognize. For example, most users probably wouldn't know what a "lanceolate" leaf shape looks like, but if they also have a picture of a lanceolate leaf shape they can determine if the leaf they are currently examining matches it.
Task 2: Learn more about a found wildflower, and add it to to My Collection
Once the user has identified the wildflower, they are able to learn more about it and add it to My Collection, which acts as a journal of all the user's findings. From the "Identified" screen (visible above in the images from Task 1), then can touch "Learn More" to read a more detailed description of the flower, interesting facts, and where it can be found globally. We chose to use headers for each section with the information hidden in drop-down sections, as opposed to having all of it displayed by default. We made this decision because one of our user research findings was that even though a user might want access to a lot of information, long walls of text can be overwhelming. This way, the user can view as much or as little information on their screen as they like. Also from the "Identified" screen, they can touch My Collection, where they will choose a primary photo for the wildflower's profile in their journal.
Task 3: View My Collection
From the home screen, the user can access My Collection to view all of the wildflowers they have found and saved. They can touch the image of the wildflower to bring up the wildflower's customizable page in the journal, where the user can add/view additional images that they've taken of the flower. They can also add/view personal notes, or share their find on social media. The user can sort their collection by name or date found, but we chose to make the images more prominent so that the wildflowers are easier for the user to see while scrolling through their collection. We chose to put the "share to social media" option here as a small icon, as opposed to on the "Identified" screen when the flower was first identified. We chose not to include it as one of the main tasks a user could perform from the "Identified" screen (alongside Learn More, Pin to Map, and Add to My Collection) because although we found that sharing to social media was a neat feature many users would enjoy, we also determined it might not be a feature that would be used frequently by all users. It is likely that most users will use the system primarily for its learning and logging features.
Heuristic Evaluation Results
After discussing our individual heuristic evaluations, we came up with a set of 11 heuristics (shown in the table below) that are ranked by severity according to the heuristics severity scale by Jakob Nielson. Interestingly we found some patterns within the data. Level 1 dealt with superficial recognition problems. Level 2 and 3 issues were mainly due to our system not matching the real world or visibility of system status. Level 4 issues were all due to a lack of user control and freedom, and had to do with not being able to go back from the current page or state. We felt that the user would not be able to overcome these issues if presented with them and thus an immediate fix was necessary. The rest of this section will focus on level 3-4 issues.
Although level 2 and 3 had the same types of issues, what differentiated level 3 issues from level 2 were how much the user experience would be impacted by these problems. The results and my collection pages have scrollable content but do not have a scroll bar on the side to indicate that scrolling is possible. The way these pages are laid out it is not clear that there are more rows of images below. This was given a visibility of system status rating. It can be easily fixed by adding a scrollbar on the side to let the user know that there is more content currently not visible. A match between system and real world issue we encountered was that the camera page did not have all the normal buttons and functionality that most mobile phone cameras have, such as a flash button. Adding the necessary camera functionalities would fix this issue. This would also allow the user to take better photos in less than ideal situations, increasing their chances of getting better results with photo recognition identification. A good field guide should have images of each plant at different stages of growth. This way a user can identify a flower that is not in full bloom. Our wildflower database only shows images in full bloom. We felt that this could cause frustration to the user. This was given a rating of match between system and real world. It can be fixed by adding information about plants when not in bloom in the description pages of each flower in our database. It would also be incorporated into the photo recognition and characteristics identification techniques.
The following level 4 issues were associated with the user control and freedom heuristic. The first issue we determined was that our description pages contain drop down menus that when they are expanded they covered the back button so that the user no longer had access to that button in order to get out of the description page. The user would have had to click the home button and go back to the very beginning and start their identification all over again. To fix this issue we decided that adding scrolling to the page would allow for the user to access the information in the description, interesting facts and location sections while still being able to click the back button and continue their use of the app. Another major issue was that when the user is adding a wildflower to their wildflower collection our app the user must set a primary image before the wildflower is added to the collection in a pop up window. Once in this state, there is no emergency exit for the user if by chance they clicked the ‘add to my collection’ button by accident or no longer wanted to add it to their collection. The user is ultimately forced to add it to their collection. We decided that adding a back button to allow the user to exit the situation would be a good fix for this issue. The last major issue we determined was on our identified page. Once a user has clicked on a wildflower in the results page there is no way for the user to go back in order to pick a different flower, if for example the user mistakenly click on a wrong flower. Again, this forces the user to go back to the home page and start the identification process all over again. This can be fixed by adding a back button to allow the user to go back to the results page.
Heuristic Evaluation Discussion Results