We recently deployed new functionality on the Zooniverse platform supporting ‘Organizations’; the ability to have a single landing page for multiple projects.
The above screenshot of the Snapshot Safari Organization illustrates the look and feel of an Organization landing page. The page provides a brief overview, information about the team leading the effort, and quick access to the 8+ related projects (e.g., Snapshot Serengeti, Snapshot De Hoop, etc.). The page also displays a few aggregated statistics across the projects: total number of projects within the Organization, total number of subjects, total number of classifications, and the total number of completed subjects. In 2020 we’ll provide a page linked to each Organization with more complete listing of its projects’ statistics, mirroring the information available through each individual project’s statistics page (e.g., https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/shuebner729/snapshot-de-hoop/stats).
The above screenshot of the Notes from Nature Organization landing page illustrates an additional ‘filter’ functionality that some Organizations will find useful. By clicking on the ‘Plants’, ‘Bug’, etc. buttons, you can filter down to just projects tagged with those keywords.
https://lab.zooniverse.org provides access to the editor interface for building Projects and building Organizations.
Within the Organization Editor Interface, the Organization owner and their collaborators can upload text and image content and link Projects to their Organization.
Which projects can be linked into an Organization?
You can only link projects for which you’re an owner or collaborator.
Only ‘launch approved’ projects will appear in the public view of your Organization landing page.
When linking a project to your Organization, the interface indicates whether that project is ‘launch approved’ or not.
As an Organization owner or collaborator, you can link a project to your Organization that isn’t yet launch approved and you can see how that project will look in your Organization landing page. By clicking on ‘volunteer’ view, you will then see only the ‘launch approved’ projects (i.e., the public view). This was put in place as a way for owners and collaborators to ‘preview’ a new project under development within a live Organizing landing page.
Once you are ready for your Organization landing page to be a publicly accessible URL, send an email to contact@zooniverse.org for the Zooniverse team to review and list it as public. We have slated development time in 2020 to add a new component within https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ listing all live Organizations.
If you have questions about setting up an Organization, please post within the ‘Building an Organization’ thread within the ‘Project Building’ Discussion Forum (https://www.zooniverse.org/talk/18).
One of the big efforts for the mobile app right now is to make the project building experience for mobile feel about the same as it does for web. For the most part, the experiences were very similar. In fact, they were almost identical besides the limitations we put on what workflows mobile projects can have. There was, however, a very large limiting factor for mobile project builders. There was no formal path from creating a project to getting that project to release on the app.
Introducing Beta Mode for mobile!
Now project builders who want their workflows to be enabled on mobile can have them reviewed on mobile as well. Here’s how it works:
When a project that has a mobile workflow is approved to go to beta, it will appear in the “Beta Review” section on the main page of the app.
From there, users will be able to view and test all of the beta projects that are currently live.
We are launching this feature with (of course) Galaxy Zoo Mobile. It is available now for all our users, so go ahead and check it out!
Like beta review on web-based projects, we will collect feedback from volunteer testers and give that back to project owners. This new process will lead to better, clearer mobile workflows in the future.
Stay tuned for more notes about upcoming mobile features!
Hi all, I am Coleman Krawczyk and for the past year I have been working on tools to help Zooniverse research teams work with their data exports. The current version of the code (v1.3.0) supports data aggregation for nearly all the project builder task types, and support will be added for the remaining task types in the coming months.
What does this code do?
This code provides tools to allow research teams to process and aggregate classifications made on their project, or in other words, this code calculates the consensus answer for a given subject based on the volunteer classifications.
The code is written in python, but it can be run completely using three command line scripts (no python knowledge needed) and a project’s data exports.
Configuration
The first script is the uses a project’s workflow data export to auto-configure what extractors and reducers (see below) should be run for each task in the workflow. This produces a series of `yaml` configuration files with reasonable default values selected.
Extraction
Next the extraction script takes the classification data export and flattens it into a series of `csv` files, one for each unique task type, that only contain the data needed for the reduction process. Although the code tries its best to produce completely “flat” data tables, this is not always possible, so more complex tasks (e.g. drawing tasks) have structured data for some columns.
Reduction
The final script takes the results of the data extraction and combine them into a single consensus result for each subject and each task (e.g. vote counts, clustered shapes, etc…). For more complex tasks (e.g. drawing tasks) the reducer’s configuration file accepts parameters to help tune the aggregation algorithms to best work with the data at hand.
A full example using these scripts can be found in the documentation.
Future for this code
At the moment this code is provided in its “offline” form, but we testing ways for this aggregation to be run “live” on a Zooniverse project. When that system is finished a research team will be able to enter their configuration parameters directly in the project builder, a server will run the aggregation code, and the extracted or reduced `csv` files will be made available for download.
Part three in a multi-part series exploring the visual and UX changes to the Zooniverse classify interface
Coming soon!
Today we’ll be going over a couple of visual changes to familiar elements of the classify interface and new additions we’re excited to premier. These updates haven’t been implemented yet, so nothing is set in stone. Please use this survey to send me feedback about these or any of the other updates to the Zooniverse.
Keyboard shortcut modal
New modals
Many respondents to my 2017 design survey requested that they be able to use the keyboard to make classifications rather than having to click so many buttons. One volunteer actually called the classifier “a carpal-tunnel torturing device”. As a designer, that’s hard to hear – it’s never the goal to actively injure our volunteers.
We actually do support keyboard shortcuts! This survey helped us realize that we need to be better at sharing some of the tools our developers have built. The image above shows a newly designed Keyboard Shortcut information modal. This modal (or “popup”) is a great example of a few of the modals we’re building – you can leave it open and drag it around the interface while you work, so you’ll be able to quickly refer to it whenever you need.
This behavior will be mirrored in a few of the modals that are currently available to you:
Add to Favorites
Add to Collection / Create a New Collection
Subject Metadata
“Need Help?”
It will also be applied to a few new ones, including…
Field Guide
New field guide layout
Another major finding from the design survey was that users did not have a clear idea where to go when they needed help with a task (see chart below).
Survey results show a mix of responses
We know research teams often put a lot of effort into their help texts, and we wanted to be sure that work was reaching the largest possible audience. Hence, we moved the Field Guide from a small button on the right-hand side of the screen – a place that can become obscured by the browser’s scrollbar – and created a larger, more prominent button in the updated toolbar:
By placing the Field Guide button in a more prominent position and allowing the modal to stay open during classifications, we hope this tool will be taken advantage of more than it currently is.
The layout was the result of the audit of every live project I conducted in spring 2017:
Field Guide
Mode item count
5
Mode label word count
2
Min item count
2
Min label word count
2
Max items count
45
Max label word count
765
Using the mode gave me the basis on which to design; however, there’s quite a disparity between min and max amounts. Because of this disparity, we’ll be giving project owners with currently active projects a lot of warning before switching to the new layout, and they’ll have the option to continue to use the current Field Guide design if they’d prefer.
Tutorial
Another major resource Zooniverse offers its research teams and volunteers is the Tutorial. Often used to explain project goals, welcome new volunteers to the project, and point out what to look for in an image, the current tutorial is often a challenge because its absolute positioning on top of the subject image.
No more!
In this iteration of the classify interface, the tutorial opens once as a modal, just as it does now, and then lives in a tab in the task area where it’s much more easily accessible. You’ll be able to switch to the Tutorial tab in order to compare the example images and information with the subject image you’re looking at, rather than opening and closing the tutorial box many times.
A brand-new statistics section
Another major comment from the survey was that volunteers wanted more ways to interact with the Zooniverse. Thus, you’ll be able to scroll down to find a brand-new section! Features we’re adding will include:
Your previous classifications with Add to Favorites or Add to Collection buttons
Interesting stats, like the amount of classifications you’ve done and the amount of classifications your community have done
Links to similar projects you might be interested in
Links to the project’s blog and social media to help you feel more connected to the research team
Links to the project’s Talk boards, for a similar purpose
Possibly: A way to indicate that you’re finished for the day, giving you the option to share your experience on social media or find another project you’re interested in.
The statistics we chose were directly related to the responses from the survey:
Survey results
Respondents were able to choose more than one response; when asked to rank them in order of importance, project-wide statistics were chosen hands-down:
Project-wide statistics are the most important
We also heard that volunteers sometimes felt disconnected from research teams and the project’s accomplishments:
“In general there is too less information about the achievement of completed projects. Even simple facts could cause a bit of a success-feeling… how many pictures in this project over all have been classified? How much time did it take? How many hours were invested by all participating citizens? Were there any surprising things for the scientists? Things like that could be reported long before the task of a project is completely fullfilled.”
Research teams often spend hours engaged in dialog with volunteers on Talk, but not everyone who volunteers on Zooniverse is aware or active on Talk. Adding a module on the classify page showing recent Talk posts will bring more awareness to this amazing resource and hopefully encourage more engagement from volunteers.
Templates for different image sizes and dimensions
When the project builder was created, we couldn’t have predicted the variety of disparate topics that would become Zooniverse projects. Originally, the subject viewer was designed for one common image size, roughly 2×3, and other sizes have since been shoehorned in to fit as well as they can.
Now, we’d like to make it easier for subjects with extreme dimensions, multimedia subjects, and multi-image subjects to fit better within the project builder. By specifically designing templates and allowing project owners to choose the one that best fits their subjects, volunteers and project owners alike will have a better experience.
Very wide subjects will see their toolbar moved to the bottom of the image rather than on the right, to give the image as much horizontal space as possible. Tall subjects will be about the same width as they have been, but the task/tutorial box will stay fixed on the screen as the image scrolls, eliminating the need to scroll up and down as often when looking at the bottom of the subject.
Wide and tall subjects
Let’s get started!
I’m so excited for the opportunity to share a preview of these changes with you. Zooniverse is a collaborative project, so if there’s anything you’d like us to address as we implement this update, please use this survey to share your thoughts and suggestions. Since we’re rolling these out in pieces, it will be much easier for us to be able to iterate, test, and make changes.
We estimate that the updates will be mostly in place by early 2019, so there’s plenty of time to make sure we’re creating the best possible experience for everyone.
Thank you so much for your patience and understanding as we move forward. In the future, we’ll be as open and transparent as possible about this process.
Part two in a multi-part series exploring the visual and UX changes to the Zooniverse classify interface
The breakdown
Today and in the next post, we’ll take a look at the reasoning behind specific changes to the classifier that we’ve already started to roll out over the past few months. We’ve had good discussions on Talk about many of the updates, but I wanted to reiterate those conversations here so there’s just one source of information to refer back to in the future.
In case you missed it, the first blog post in this series previews the complete new classify layout.
As a reminder, if you have feedback about these changes or anything else on the site you’d like to see addressed, please use this survey link.
Navigation bar
Updated navigation bar
We started with a rethinking of each project’s navigation bar. The new design features cleaner typography, a more prominent project title, and visual distinction from the sitewide navigation. It also includes the project’s home page background image, giving the project visual distinction while keeping the classify interface itself clean and legible. It’s also responsive: on smaller screen heights, the height of the navigation bar adjusts accordingly.
The most important goal we solved in making this change was to separate the project navigation from the site navigation. During my initial site research and in talking to colleagues and volunteers, many found it difficult to distinguish between the two navigations. Adding a background, a distinct font style, and moving the options to the right side of the page accomplishes this goal.
Neutral backgrounds
Classify interface with neutral background
In conjunction with adding the background image to the navigation bar, the background image was removed from the main classify interface. It was replaced with a cool light grey, followed quickly by the dark grey of the Dark Theme.
Legibility is one of the main goals of any web designer, and it was the focus of this update. By moving to clean greys, all of the focus is now on the subject and task. There are some really striking subject images on Zooniverse, from images of the surface of Mars to zebras in their natural habitat. We want to make sure these images are front and center rather than getting lost within the background image.
The Dark Theme was a suggestion from a Zooniverse researcher – they pointed out that some subject images are similar in tone to the light grey, so a darker theme was added to make sure contrast would be enough to make the image “pop”. We love suggestions like this! While the team strives to be familiar with every Zooniverse project, the task is sometimes beyond us, so we rely on our researchers and volunteers to point out anomalies like this. If you find something like this, you can use this survey to bring it to my attention.
Another great suggestion from a Zooniverse volunteer was the addition of the project name on the left side of the screen. This hasn’t been implemented yet, but it’s a great way to help with wayfinding if the interface is scrolled to below the navigation bar.
Updated task section
New task section
By enclosing the task and its responses in a box rather than leaving it floating in space, the interface gives a volunteer an obvious place to look for the task across every project. Adjusting the typography elevates the interface and helps it feel more professional.
One of the most frequent comments we heard in the 2017 survey was that the interface had far too much scrolling – either the subject image or the task area was too tall. The subject image height will be addressed at a later date, but this new task area was designed specifically with scrolling in mind.
I used the averages I found in my initial project audit and the average screen height (643 px) based on Google Analytics data from the same time period to design a task area that would comfortably fit on screen without scrolling. It’s important to note that there are always outliers in large-scale sites like Zooniverse. While using averages is the best way to design for most projects, we know we can’t provide the most optimal experience for every use case.
You’ll also notice the secondary “Tutorial” tab to the right of the “Task” label. This is a feature that’s yet to be implemented, and I’ll talk more about it in the next post.
And more to come
The next installments in this series will address the additional updates we have planned, like updated modals and a whole new stats section.
Part one in a multi-part series exploring the visual and UX changes to the Zooniverse classify interface
First, an introduction.
Zooniverse began in 2007, with a galaxy-classifying project called Galaxy Zoo. The project was wildly successful, and one of the lead researchers, Chris Lintott, saw an opportunity to help other researchers accomplish similar goals. He assembled a team of developers and set to work building custom projects just like Galaxy Zoo for researchers around the world.
And things were good.
But the team started to wonder: How can we improve the process to empower researchers to build their own Zooniverse projects, rather than relying on the team’s limited resources to build their projects for them?
In the first year of its inception, the number of projects available to citizen scientist volunteers nearly doubled. Popularity spread, the team grew, and things seemed to be going well.
That’s where I come in. * Record scratch *
Three years after the project builder’s debut, I was hired as the Zooniverse designer. With eight years’ experience in a variety of design roles from newspaper page design to user experience for mobile apps to web design, I approached the new project builder-built projects with fresh eyes, taking a hard look at what was working and what areas could be improved.
Over the next week, I’ll be breaking down my findings and observations, and talking through the design changes we’re making, shedding more light on the aims and intentions behind these changes and how they will affect your experience on the Zooniverse platform.
If you take one thing away from this series it’s that this design update, in following with the ethos of Zooniverse, is an iterative, collaborative process. These posts represent where we are now, in June 2018, but the final product, after testing and hearing your input, may be different. We’re learning as we go, and your input is hugely beneficial as we move forward.
Here’s a link to an open survey in case you’d like to share thoughts, experiences, or opinions at any point.
Let’s dive in.
Part one: Research
My first few weeks on the job were spent exploring Zooniverse, learning about the amazing world of citizen science, and examining projects with similar task types from across the internet.
I did a large-scale analysis of the site in general, going through every page in each section and identifying areas with inconsistent visual styles or confusing user experiences.
Current site map, March 2017Analysis of current template types
After my initial site analysis, I created a list of potential pages or sections that were good candidates for a redesign. The classify interface stood out as the best place to start, so I got to work.
Visual design research
First, I identified areas of the interface that could use visual updates. My main concerns were legibility, accessibility, and varying screen sizes. With an audience reaching to the tens of thousands per week, the demographic diversity makes for an interesting design challenge.
Next, I conducted a comprehensive audit of every project that existed on the Zooniverse in March 2017 (79 in total, including custom projects like Galaxy Zoo), counting question/task word count, the max number of answers, subject image dimensions, field guide content, and a host of other data points. That way, I could accurately design for the medians rather than choosing arbitrarily. When working on this scale, it’s important to use data like these to ensure that the largest possible group is well designed for.
Here are some selected data:
Task type: Drawing
20
Answers
Average number of possible answers
2
Answer average max word count
4.5
Min number
1
Answer max max word count
10
Max number
7
Answer min max word count
2
Median number
1
Answer median max word count
1
Number with thumbnail images
1
Task type: Question
9
Answers
Average number of possible answers
6
Answer average max word count
6
Min number
2
Answer max max word count
18
Max number
9
Answer min max word count
1
Median number
3.5
Answer median max word count
4
Number with thumbnail images
3
Task type: Survey
9
Answers
Average number of possible answers
31
Answer average max word count
4
Min number
6
Answer max max word count
7
Max number
60
Answer min max word count
3
Median number
29
Answer median max word count
4
Number with thumbnail images
9
Even More Research
Next, I focused on usability. To ensure that I understood issues from as many perspectives as possible, I sent a design survey to our beta testers mailing list, comprising about 100,000 volunteers (if you’re not already on the list, you can opt in via your Zooniverse email settings). Almost 1,200 people responded, and those responses informed the decisions I made and helped prioritize areas of improvement.
Here are the major findings from that survey:
No consensus on where to go when you’re not sure how to complete a task.
Many different destinations after finishing a task.
Too much scrolling and mouse movement.
Lack of keyboard shortcuts.
Would like the ability to view previous classifications.
Translations to more languages.
Need for feedback when doing classifications.
Finding new projects that might also be interesting.
Larger images.
In the next few blog posts, I’ll be breaking down specific features of the update and showing how these survey findings help inform the creation of many of the new features.
Without further ado
Basic classify template
Some of these updates will look familiar, as we’ve already started to implement style and layout adjustments. I’ll go into more detail in subsequent posts, but at a high level, these changes seek to improve your overall experience classifying on the site no matter where you are, what browser you’re using, or what type of project you’re working on.
Visually, the site is cleaner and more professional, a reflection of Zooniverse’s standing in the citizen science community and of the real scientific research that’s being done. Studieshaveshown that good, thoughtful design influences a visitor’s perceptions of a website or product, sometimes obviously, sometimes at a subliminal level. By making thoughtful choices in the design of our site, we can seek to positively affect audience perceptions about Zooniverse, giving volunteers and researchers even more of a reason to feel proud of the projects they’re passionate about.
It’s important to note that this image is a reflection of our current thought, in June 2018, but as we continue to test and get feedback on the updates, the final design may change. One benefit to rolling updates out in pieces is the ability to quickly iterate ideas until the best solution is found.
The timeline
We estimate that the updates will be mostly in place by early 2019.
This is due in part to the size of our team. At most, there are about three people working on these updates while also maintaining our commitments to other grant-funded projects and additional internal projects. The simple truth is that we just don’t have the resources to be able to devote anyone full-time to this update.
The timeline is also influenced in a large part by the other half of this update: A complete overhaul of the infrastructure of the classifier. These changes aren’t as visible, but you’ll notice an improvement in speed and functionality that is just as important as the “facelift” portion of the update.
Stay tuned!
We’ve seen your feedback on Talk, via email, and on Github, and we’re happy to keep a dialog going about subsequent updates. To streamline everything and make sure your comments don’t get missed, please only use this survey link to post thoughts moving forward.
Breaking news… Zooniverse volunteers on Exoplanet Explorers have discovered a new 4-planet system!
Computer animation of the 4-planet system. Planet orbits are to scale and planet sizes are to scale with each other, but not with the star and the size of the orbits. Credit: Simone Duca.
Congratulations to all* who directly classified the light curves for this system, bringing it to the attention of the research team. And an enormous *thank you* to the 14,000+ volunteers who provided over 2 million classifications in just three days to make this discovery possible. This is equivalent to 3.4 years of full time effort. I *heart* people-powered research! It’s also amazing how quickly we were able to get these data to the eyes of the public — the Kepler Space Satellite observed this star between December 15 and March 4, 2017. Data arrived on Earth on March 7th and Zooniverse volunteers classified it April 3-5, 2017. I *heart* Zooniverse.
ExoplanetExplorers.org was the featured project for our inaugural ABC Australia Stargazing Live 3-day, prime-time TV event, which just ended yesterday and through which this discovery was made. Over the years, we’ve partnered with the BBC as part of their Stargazing Live event in the UK. On night 1, Chris Lintott, our intrepid leader, invites the million+ viewers to participate in that year’s featured Zooniverse project, on night 2 he highlights interesting potential results coming through the pipeline, and on night 3, if science nods in our favor, he has the pleasure of announcing exciting discoveries you all, our volunteers, have made (for example, last year’s pulsar discovery and the supernova discovery from a couple years back).
This year we partnered with both the UK’s BBC and Australia’s ABC TV networks to run two Stargazing Live series in two weeks. We’re exhausted and exhilarated from the experience! We can imagine you all are as well (hats off to one of our volunteers who provided over 15,000 classifications in the first two days)!
Stargazing Live epitomizes many of our favorite aspects of being a member of the Zooniverse team – it’s a huge rush, filled with the highs and lows of keeping a site up when thousands of people are suddenly providing ~7000 classifications a minute at peak. We’re so proud of our web development team and their amazing effort; their smart solutions, quick thinking, and teamwork. The best part is that we collectively get to experience the joy, wonder, and discovery of the process of science right alongside the researchers. Each year the research teams leading each project have what is likely among the most inspiring (and intense) 3-days of their careers, carrying out the detective work of following up each potential discovery at breakneck speed.
Over 2 million classifications in just 1 day on planetninesearch.org!
Brad Tucker and his team leading PlanetNineSearch.org featured in the BBC Stargazing Live event this year checked and rechecked dozens of Planet 9 candidates orbital parameters and against known object catalogs, making sure no stone was left unturned. We were bolstered throughout with re-discoveries of known objects, including many known asteroids and Chiron, a minor planet in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus.
The red, green, and blue dots in the lower left quadrant show Chiron as it moved across the Australian night sky during the Skymapper Telescope Observations for planetninesearch.org.
Even though Planet 9 hasn’t been discovered yet, it’s huge progress for that field of research to have completed a thorough search through this Skymapper dataset, which allows us to probe out to certain distances and sizes of objects across a huge swath of the sky. Stay tuned for progress at planetninesearch.org and through the related BackyardWorlds.org project, searching a different parameter space for Planet 9 in WISE data.
Also, and very importantly, the BBC Stargazing Live shows gave the world an essential new member of the Twitterverse:
Understanding this inside joke alone makes it worth watching the show!
The Exoplanet Explorers team, led by Ian Crossfield, Jessie Christiansen, Geert Barentsen, Tom Barclay, and more were also up through much of each night of the event this week, churning through the results. Because the Kepler Space Telescope K2 dataset is so rich, there were dozens of potential candidates to triple check in just 3 days. Not only did our volunteers discover the 4-planet system shown above, but 90 new and true candidate exoplanets! That’s truly an amazing start to a project.
Chris Lintott shows Brian Cox and Julia Zemiro the possible planets we’ve found so far, using the nearby town’s entire stock of gumballs.
Once you all, our amazing community, have classified all the images in this project and the related PlanetHunters.org, the researchers will be able to measure the occurrence rates of different types of planets orbiting different types of stars. They’ll use this information to answer questions like — Are small planets (like Venus) more common than big ones (like Saturn)? Are short-period planets (like Mercury) more common than those on long orbits (like Mars)? Do planets more commonly occur around stars like the Sun, or around the more numerous, cooler, smaller “red dwarfs”?
There’s also so much to learn about the 4-planet system itself. It’s particularly interesting because it’s such a compact system (all orbits are well within Mercury’s distance to our Sun) of potentially rocky planets. If these characteristics hold true, we expect they will put planet formation theories to the test.
A fun part of our effort for the show was to create visualizations for this newly discovered system. Simone, one of our developers, used http://codepen.io/anon/pen/RpOYRw to create the simulation shown above. We welcome all to try their hand using this tool or others to create their favorite visualization of the system. Do post your effort in the comments below. To set you on the right path, here are our best estimates for the system so far:
The star is in the constellation of Aquarius (see if can get the WWT), with ra, dec = 23:15:47.77, -10:50:58.91.
Host star (V=12): 0.8 Rsol, 0.9 Msol. Late G or early K.
We predict there may be more planets further out, with similar resonances as the inner planets. The predictions for outer planets are 20d, 30.7d, 47d, etc. (assuming Per_x = 3.56 * 1.538^x.). Planet number 11 would be ~264d, planet 12 ~405d.
There are 73 other previously discovered exoplanet systems with 4 or more planets known.
In 2372 years, on July 9, 4388AD, all four planets will transit at the same time.
If you’re standing on planet e, the nearest planet would appear bigger than the full moon on the sky. Apparent size of other planets while standing on e = 10 arcmin, 16 arcmin, 32 arcmin.
If you’re on planet e, the star barely appears to rotate: you see the same side of it for many “years,” because the star rotates just as quickly as planet “e” goes around it.
This post wouldn’t be complete without a thank you to Edward Gomez for following up candidates with the Los Cumbres Observatory Robotic Telescope Network. Not only is LCO a great research tool, but it provides amazing access to telescopes and quality curricular materials for students around the world.
*And a special thanks to the following volunteers who correctly identified at least one the planets in the newly discovered 4-planet system:
Joshua Kusch
Edward Heaps
Ivan Terentev
TimothyCatron
James Richmond
Alan Patricio Zetina Floresmarhx
sankalp mohan
seamonkeyluv
traumeule
B Butler
Nicholas Sloan
Kerrie Ryan
Huskynator
Lee Mason
Trudy Frankensteiner
Alan Goldsmith
Gavin Condon
Simon Wilde
Sharon McGuire
helenatgzoo
Melina Thévenot
Niamh Claydon-Mullins
ellieoban
Anastasios D. Papanastasiou
AndyGrey
Angela Crow
Dave Williams
Throbulator
Tim Smith
Erin Thomas
Valentina Saavedra
Carole Riley
sidy2001
bn3
ilgiz
Antonio Pasqua
Peter Bergvall
Stephen Hippisley
sidy2001
bn3
Michael Sarich
Anyone heading over to the Zooniverse today will spot a few changes (there may also be some associated down-time, but in this event we will get the site up again as soon as possible). There’s a new layout for the homepage, a few new projects have appeared and there’s a new area and a new structure to Talk to enable you to discuss the Zooniverse and citizen science in general, something we hope will bring together conversations that until now have been stuck within individual projects.
What you won’t see immediately is that the site is running on a new version of the Zooniverse software, codenamed ‘Panoptes‘. Panoptes has been designed so that it’s easier for us to update and maintain, and to allow more powerful tools for project builders. It’s also open source from the start, and if you find bugs or have suggestions about the new site you can note them on Github (or, if you’re so inclined, contribute to the codebase yourself). We certainly know we have a lot more to do; today is a milestone, but not the end of our development. We’re looking forward to continuing to work on the platform as we see how people are using it.
Panoptes allows the Zooniverse to be open in another way too. At its heart is a project building tool. Anyone can log in and start to build their own Zooniverse-style project; it takes only a moment to get started and I reckon not much more than half an hour to get to something really good. These projects can be made public and shared with friends, colleagues and communities – or by pressing a button can be submitted to the Zooniverse team for a review (to make sure our core guarantee of never wasting people’s time is preserved), beta test (to make sure it’s usable!), and then launch.
We’ve done this because we know that finding time and funding for web development is the bottleneck that prevents good projects being built. For the kind of simple interactions supported by the project builder, we’ve built enough examples that we know what a good and engaging project looks like. We’ll still build new and novel custom projects helping the Zooniverse to grow, but today’s launch should mean a much greater number of engaging and exciting projects that will lead to more research, achieved more quickly.
We hope you enjoy the new Zooniverse, and comments and feedback are very welcome. I’m looking forward to seeing what people do with our new toy.
Chris
PS You can read more about building a project here, about policies for which projects are promoted to the Zooniverse community here and get stuck into the new projects at www.zooniverse.org/#/projects.
PPS We’d be remiss if we didn’t thank our funders, principally our Google Global Impact award and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and I want to thank the heroic team of developers who have got us to this point. I shall be buying them all beer. Or gin. Or champagne. Or all three.
Today we’ve added a new feature to all the Zooniverse sites that use the new version of Talk. As you’ll know, most of our projects allow you to save ‘favourites’ – a list of things that are either cool/interesting/worthy of keeping and something to refer back to later. One often asked for feature is for this collection of favourites in the project to be available in Talk as a collection.
Today we’ve added this feature and from now on when you favourite something on the main site (e.g. Galaxy Zoo) it will automagically appear in a collection called ‘Favourites’ on Talk. That means you can discuss, share or even import them as a data source into tools.zooniverse.org
Enjoy!
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