Tag Archives: mobile

CitizenScience, News, Technical

Zooniverse Mobile App Release v2.8.2!

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Now it’s even easier to contribute to science from your phone!

On any crowded public bus (before the pandemic), people sat next to each other, eyes fixed on their phones, smiling, swiping. 

What were they all doing? Using a dating app, maybe. Or maybe they were separating wildcam footage of empty desert from beautiful birds. Maybe they were spotting spiral arms on faraway galaxies.

Maybe one of them was you!  

We’ve loved seeing the participation in the Zooniverse through the mobile app (available for iOS and Android) over the past two years. So we made it even easier for you to do that wherever you swipe these days—a park bench, or maybe your home. (Please don’t swipe and drive). 

Right now, you can go into the app and contribute to Galaxy Zoo Mobile, Catalina Outer Solar System Survey, Disk Detective, Mapping Historic Skies, Nest Quest Go, or Planet Four: Ridges. And we have more projects on the way!

What’s new in the app

When you update to version 2.8.2, you’ll notice a slick new look. At the very top, there’s now an “All Projects” category. This will show you everything available for mobile—with the projects that need your help the most sorted at the very top! You can also still choose a specific discipline, of course.

That’s it for features that are totally new, but a lot of features in this version are fixed. No more crashing when you tap on browser projects. A lot fewer project-related crashes. Animated gifs, which previously worked only on iOS, now also work on Android—so researchers can show you an image that changes over time.  

What’s more—and you’ll never see this, but it’s important to us, the developers—we’ve made a lot of changes that help us keep improving the app. We have better crash reporting mechanisms and more complete automated testing. We also updated all of our documentation so that developers from outside our team can contribute to the app, too! We’d love to be a go-to open source project for people who are learning, or working in, React Native (the platform on which our app is built).

Aggregate Functionality

The full list of functionalities now includes:

  • Swipe (binary question [A or B.] response)
  • Single-answer question (A, B, or C)
  • Multi-answer question (any combination of A, B, and C.)
  • Rectangle drawing task (drawing a rectangle around a feature within a subject)
  • Single-image subjects
  • Multi-image subjects (e.g. uploading 2+ images as a single subject; users swipe up/down to display the different images)
  • Animated gifs as subjects
  • Subject auto-linking (automatically linking subjects retired from one workflow into another workflow of interest on the same project)
  • Push notifications (sending messages/alerts about new data, new workflows, etc., via the app)
  • Preview (an owner or collaborator on a project in development being able to preview a workflow in the ‘Preview’ section of the mobile app)
  • Beta Review (mobile enabled workflows are accessible through the ‘Beta Review’ section of the app for a project in the Beta Review process; includes an in-app feedback form)
  • Ability to see a list of all available projects, as well as filter by discipline (with active mobile app workflows listed at the top)

We also carried out a number of infrastructure improvements, including: 

  • Upgrades to the React Native libraries we use
  • Created a staging environment to test changes before they are implemented in full production
  • Additional test coverage
  • Implemented bug reporting and tracking
  • Complete documentation, so open source contributors can get the app running from our public code repository
  • And a myriad of additional improvements like missing icons no longer crashing the app, improvements to the rectangle drawing task, etc.

Note: we will continue developing the app; this is just the end of this phase of effort and a great time to share the results.

If you’re leading a Zooniverse project and have any questions about where in the Project Editor ‘workflow’ interface to ‘enable on mobile’, don’t hesitate to email contact@zooniverse.org. And/or if you’re a volunteer and wonder if workflow(s) on a given project could be enabled on mobile, please post in that project’s Talk to start the conversation with the research team and us. The more, the merrier!

Looking forward to having more projects on the mobile app!

A Few Stats of Interest:

  • Since Jan 1, 2020: 
    • 6.2 million classifications submitted via the app (that’s 7% of 86.7 million classifications total through Zooniverse projects)
    • 18,000 installations on iOS + 17,000 on Android
  • Current Active Users (people who have used the app in the last 30 days):
    • 1,800 on iOS + 7,700 on Android

Previous Blog Posts about the Zooniverse Mobile App:

Technical

Live Coding the Zooniverse

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Here at the Zooniverse, we make scientific discovery accessible to the community. Now, we’re incorporating that philosophy into our software engineering.

Our mobile developer, Chelsea Troy, live streams some of her development work on the Zooniverse Mobile App (available on the Apple App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android). This means that you can watch her as she codes, and you can even submit questions and suggestions while she is working!  For an introduction to the App and Chelsea’s code development efforts, check out this YouTube video.

Why did we decide to try out live coding? Chelsea talks a little bit about that decision in this blog post. Among the reasons: live coding videos are a great way to attract and recruit possible open source contributors whose work on the Zooniverse mobile app and other codebases could greatly benefit the Zooniverse.

After each live stream, a recording of the session will remain on YouTube. Chelsea also publishes show notes for each stream that include a link to the video, a link to the pull request created in the video, an outline of what we covered in the video (with timestamps), and a list of the parts of the video that viewers found the most useful.

Sound interesting? Willing to contribute to Zooniverse open source code development? Keep an eye on Chelsea’s Twitter account (@heychelseatroy) and blog for future live stream events.  But go ahead and check out the recording of her first live stream and show notes to get you started.

For more information on the mobile app, see related blog posts:
Blog Entry: Notes on the Zooniverse Mobile App – New Functionality Release
Blog Entry: A First Look at Mobile Usage and Results

Featured Image Credit: Reddit/cavepopcorn

News

Notes on the Zooniverse mobile app: A first look at mobile usage and results

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We’re happy that in the three weeks since the email newsletter advertising the Zooniverse Mobile App (available on the Apple App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android) we’ve seen a great response from the Zooniverse community!

Exciting Numbers

New downloads of the app show that Zooniverse volunteers are interested in contributing to projects while on their phones. Since July 15th, the iOS app has been downloaded more than 1,620 times, and the Android app more than 1,000 times. In total, the app has been downloaded more than 30,000 times since its first release!

When it comes to classifications, mobile workflows are making an impact. Since July 15th, over 30% of submitted classifications have come from the Zooniverse Mobile App — that’s over 800,000 classifications! These numbers show that there is a willing community of volunteers ready to contribute through their mobile devices.

How Zooniverse Projects Use the Mobile App

The mobile app is a great tool that’s been used in a number of different ways by Zooniverse projects. In some cases, a project’s entire classification task can be included in the mobile app — for example, check out Bash the Bug and Radio Meteor Zoo. For other projects, workflows hosted on the mobile app provide crucial help by sorting and filtering images. As an example, multiple projects use simple “Yes/No” questions to filter out and retire empty images, which significantly reduces the total number of classifications required for the project.

One example where this filtering technique was recently tested: the Local Group Cluster Search project, which is searching for star clusters in images of nearby galaxies. We examined how mobile-based classifications stack up to those made through the project’s primary drawing-based workflow by posting images in both mobile app and desktop browser workflows to make a direct comparison between the two. We show in the plot below that classifications obtained via the mobile app workflow agree well with those obtained through the drawing workflow, as shown by the trend highlighted by the red line.

2D histogram showing a strong correlation between the fraction of “Yes” responses to the mobile workflow question “Is there a cluster, galaxy, or emission region in the image?” on the x-axis, and the max hit rate (the fraction of people who clicked) for objects in the same image on the y-axis. The red line shows the trend in the data, where the “Yes” fraction and max hit rate trace track one another, representing agreement between the two sets of classifications.

This successful test demonstrates that filtering workflows in the mobile app can be used to identify blank images and retire these subjects quickly. In the case of the Local Group Cluster Search, we estimate that the number of classifications needed to complete the search will be reduced by 30% — that’s significant volunteer effort saved!

We look forward to the continued success of the Zooniverse Mobile App! Download the app today from the Apple App Store or Google Play. For more information on the mobile app, check out these blog posts.

News

Notes on the Zooniverse Mobile App: New Functionality Release

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We recently deployed new functionality to our Zooniverse mobile app (available via iTunes and Google Play for iOS and Android). The list of what’s now available is:

  • Swipe (binary question [Yes/No, A/B, etc.] response)
  • Multi-answer question (A/B/C/D/etc.)
  • Rectangle drawing task (drawing a rectangle around a feature within a subject)
  • Multi-image subjects (e.g. uploading 2+ images as a single subject; users swipe up/down to display the different images)
  • Subject auto-linking (automatically linking subjects retired from one workflow into another workflow of interest on the same project; note – this is relevant not just for workflows on the app)
  • Push notifications (sending messages/alerts about new data, new workflows, etc., via the app)
  • Preview (an owner or collaborator on a project in development being able to preview a workflow in the ‘Preview’ section of the mobile app)
  • Beta Review (mobile enabled workflows are accessible through the ‘Beta Review’ section of the app for a project in the Beta Review process; includes an in-app feedback form)

Note: we will continue developing the app; this is just the end of Phase 1.

With this functionality in place, we’re reaching out to research teams to encourage them to ‘enable on mobile’ any workflows that use the above functionalities. Our goal is to have at least 6 active projects on the mobile app in June. At that time, we’ll send an e-newsletter to the full community of Zooniverse users encouraging them to download the app and check out the projects. This will be the first promotion of the app to our full community. The feedback we’ve received from the few projects that have used it so far has been great. We’re so excited to do a major push and we really want as many projects as possible to benefit from the attention and engagement.

With that in mind, if you’re leading a Zooniverse project and have any questions about where in the Project Editor ‘workflow’ interface to ‘enable on mobile’, don’t hesitate to email contact@zooniverse.org. And/or if you’re a volunteer and wonder if workflow(s) on a given project could be enabled on mobile, please post in that project’s Talk to start the conversation with the research team and us. The more, the merrier!

Looking forward to having more projects on the mobile app and launching a major promotional/recruitment push in June!

For more information on the mobile app, see:
https://blog.zooniverse.org/2018/11/05/beta-for-mobile/
https://blog.zooniverse.org/2018/05/18/notes-on-mobile-launching-a-workflow/

CitizenScience, New Features, News

Beta for Mobile

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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.

Simulator Screen Shot - iPhone 8 - 2018-10-31 at 13.41.22

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!

Simulator Screen Shot - iPhone 8 - 2018-10-31 at 13.41.35

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!

Download our iOS and Android apps!

News

Notes on Mobile: Launching a Workflow

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Hello! It’s probably about time that I introduce myself. I am the (relatively) new mobile developer working on the Zooniverse Android and iOS apps. I joined the team back in February and, as the sole developer on the project, I want to not only improve and enhance our current app, but also focus on making sure our community of project builders and volunteers are excited and engaged with the app.

So, what is the app?

As our user base on the app is significantly smaller than our user base on the website, I am guessing that a fair share of the people reading haven’t even used the app. Both the Android and iOS apps are very specialized version of the website.

More specifically, the app only supports a specific type of workflow: A question workflow with only two answers. Here’s a screen cap from one of the current running projects: CameraCatalogue.

Simulator Screen Shot - iPhone 6 - 2018-05-16 at 14.25.56

As the image shows, the user can swipe left or right based on the answers given below. But don’t take it from me. Give it a try!

How do I get my project on mobile?

Deploying a project to mobile is not so hard. In fact, it’s just a matter of adding a mobile enabled workflow to your project. As mentioned before, the mobile app only shows question workflows, so you are going to want to configure a workflow with just a question task:

mobile builder

Now that you have a question task set up, you may notice the ‘Mobile App’ section at the bottom of the page:

mobileapp.png

As long as all of the criteria in the checklist are met you can enable your project for mobile. And that’s it! If your project is launch approved it will show up in the app. 

Can I test the workflow before it goes live?

Yes! On the most recent release of the app we introduced a preview mode. Here’s how it works.

Prerequisites:

  • Project visibility set to public
  • Project state set to development
  • Project has a workflow that is mobile enabled

You can view this project if you log in to the app with an account that is either an owner or collaborator on the project. If everything was set up correctly, you should see a preview tab in the main menu like so:

Simulator Screen Shot - iPhone 6 - 2018-05-17 at 10.39.32

From there you should be able to view and run your workflow just as it would appear when it is actually live.

Beta for mobile is coming

As of now, only projects that are currently launch approved can add mobile workflows. This is because we have no beta process set up for the app.

But stay tuned! We are working on a beta system for mobile. I’ll be making another blog post once that is live.