Week 4: Form design

Matt pointed out that the PDF forms from last week had a lot of fields to fill out. This can create more opportunities for a user to enter the wrong data. As a solution, the forms will now ask for location only, and the rest will be populated automatically with code that references a categories table. I am still working on a better way of counting bats, since PDFs can be difficult to make dynamic (I also don't have the pro Adobe suite).

I have made some progress on the app this week as well. It has been fun to work on and I am learning a lot. I think this approach may be possible, since the mobile platform would be fully dynamic and worth setting up developer accounts for. The user coold select locations or species from menus, add or subtract rows for species, and use more. An app would allow uahtorized users to view graphs and statistics about the existing database if they wanted to.

Other than that, my research proposal came out okay although I was behind by a day or two. Normally I am on top things but the past week has been a bit too much work. I may have to modify my approach but I plan on observing assets and drawbacks of the current methods of data collection and get user feedback. I hope to then test the methods for susceptibility to error by including randomized test cases or scenarios that are likely to occur. The last bits of the project would be to modify the methods to better suite surveyor's needs and repeat the testing process.