- Lessons learned - What is ? Project of Museum fr Naturkunde - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

• Lessons learned -

• Project of Museum für Naturkunde Berlin + AWI +

University Erlangen

• Originally for scientific whale watching1
• Citizen Science project of the German GBIF node (GBIF-D)
• Mobile application for retrieving, recording and sharing

biodiversity observations

• International, multilingual, free of charge
• Existing information from GBIF, CoL, Wikipedia
• Usable online and offline
• Android, iOS, FirefoxOS

What is ?

Online platform www.anymals.org for

• Presenting the data on maps,
• Commenting and discussing determinations and
• bservations of others,
• Organizing groups,
• Building customized forms,
• Data entry and editing.
• etc.

What is ?

• 2011:
• Search for data in your surrounding and get

information

• Enter species observations
• Native Android app
• 2012
• Citizen science groups
• interface to Open Nature Guides (identification keys)
• Citizen Science data mobilized for GBIF
• Beginner's mode vs. expert mode
• Improved user interface

chronicles

• 2013
• Customizable forms
• Interface to Scratchpads
• First HTML5 based version (more OS independent)
• New user interface
• 2014
• Generic framework for building specialized apps on the

code basis of anymals + plants within hours or few days (i.e. Comber, Terra Explora, Walog, Pilze, BeachExplorer, anylog (experts only!)) more information on https://www.anymals.org/?view=customapps

chronicles

User / Download Statistics

installations

2012 2013 2014 ~ 174,000

current users

~ 28,000

• “being a free app doesn’t mean it advertises itself”
• PR, campaigns and events are needed!

Lessons learned

• “sometimes less is more”

A lot of different demands can’t be accommodated in one app

• Laymen => information, learning, fun, awareness
• Experts => recording, taxonomy, efficiency,

flexibility

• Projects => organization, mobilization, interfaces,

specialization

• Technical demands
• => offline, but no large files
• => many operating systems and different

devices

• “sometimes less is more”
• the user interface is the most important to make a user

decide to keep the app or not

Lessons learned

• “sometimes less is more”
• the user interface is the most important to make a user

decide to keep the app or not

Lessons learned

Lessons learned

Lessons learned

• “sometimes less is more”
• the user interface is the most important to make a user

decide to keep the app or not

Lessons learned

• “everyone builds mobile apps”
• Let’s join efforts !
• “mobile species identification needs high-quality keys”

• Optimization of the generic app framework

(available in 2015 at www.mobilebiodiversity.com)

• More derivate applications
• Own Cloud service for images
• Data quality data for nature conservation

(project draft work in progress)

• As always: New collaborations are welcome!

Future plans

References

• Bombosch A., Zitterbart DP., van Opzeeland IC., Frickenhaus S.,

Wisz MS, Boebel O. Predictive habitat modelling of humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and antarctic minke (Balaenoptera bonaerensis) Whales in the southern ocean as a planning tool for seismic surveys Deep Sea Research I, Volume 91, Sept. 2014, Pages 101– 114 , doi: 10.1016/j.dsr.2014.05.017

• http://www.anymals.org

– Customizable forms https://www.anymals.org/?view=/sightingforms/ – Get your own mobile app https://www.anymals.org/?view=customapps/

• http://offene-naturfuehrer.de (“Open Nature Guides”)
• http://scratchpads.eu/

Thanks for your attention!