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Dear Open-foris team, in our project "PathFinder", we are surveying 250 plots over 26 EU countries (some plots have over 80 trees per plot). Data will be published publicly online. We started with official mobile app, but during the project we found Arena Mobile Experiments a better take from the practical perspective. In very short: field teams provide more positive feedback when working with Arena Mobile Experiments (I am going to explore this so far subjective impression with a questionnaire at the end of the survey). I am thinking to reflect this shift in our documentation -- from a position where we were giving "warning" about Arena Mobile Experiments as "unofficial", practically discouraging countries to use Arena Mobile Experiments to the opposite side. For this, it would be even better (not like guerrilla action) if this app will be part of official Arena toolkit. Or at least would not get this "warning / unofficial" labels. Do you have some plans for adjusting this? In my understanding, the presence of two alternative mobile apps can be seen as a result of openness, democracy and positive competition in the project. Maybe encouraging others to even join the development of Arena -- as a nice perspective open-source tool! If those two apps had the equal / similar place on the stage, it would create better impression compared to the situation when you realize during the project that the unofficial solution is actually more useful in your case. Thanks! Jiri. |
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Dear Jiri I designed a survey for a plantation experiment in Switzerland (> 50 sites, ~1'450 plots, >50'000 trees) for Arena Mobile (AM). However, after some serious performance issues, we switched to Arena Mobile Experiments (AME) using iPads. I have posted more about this elsewhere in the forum (seehere). This was during the development phase of the survey. Since then, the survey has gone live and our team has been using it in the field without any significant problems. Although the performance issues seem to have been fixed (or at least greatly improved), I completely agree with you that AME should be listed as an official alternative to AM. I prefer the simpler and more intuitive UI and the embedding of input fields into forms in AME. For example, when a field is selected for data entry, AM displays a white pop-up window that may need to be minimised or scrolled after data has been entered, especially on smaller device screens. This considerbaly slows down the workflow. Also, the slider to confirm the deletion of an item in AME is more convenient (and still safe) than typing 'delete survey' or similar in AM. Best, |
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Dear Open-foris team: I would like to share my experience with AME. We are conducting a prescribed burn monitoring program in California with field inventory and terrestrial Lidar data, and in short we are delighted with AME. At first we were testing the official version but when we discovered AME we did not change. Lately I have not followed the updates of the official version, so I am not sure if it allows it or not, but the option of being able to download data from the server is essential for us and with AME we can do it. Congratulations on your great work!!! |
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Dear all, Thanks for your overt feedback regarding the Arena Mobile apps. As you also indicated, our developer is constantly improving the user-experience of the Arena Mobile app. Some features of AM that are slowing the working process will be soon replaced by more convenient methods. The question about upgrading the unofficial app is something that we need to consider in the future, but meanwhile our strategy is to keep the space open for all applications that users find most suitable for the needs. In any case, your feedback is really appreciated, and we wish to continue receiving your experiences of using these Open Foris tools in your projects. It would be highly valuable for us if you could share your experience / opinion on pros and cons for both versions. Many thanks a kind wishes! Lauri (OF Arena team) |
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Dear Open Foris team, I thought I could contribute also to this discussion, as I have been navigating between AM and AME for quite a while. Regarding the warning against the 'unofficial' nature of AME, I agree that this is not optimal. And there are many small simple things (well described in several posts) that just make the use of AME easier, faster, and error free. Therefore, it would make sense to encourage the testing of features in AME, as an “official” experimental version of the same Arena team (until you can stream work into a single app). Some key features that I like better in AME: -All aspects of navigation between screens are more easy and more intuitive in AME -AME does not have this enormous bottom screen that is distracting and nor really useful -Deleting records after having uploaded them is easier with AME (we can select more then one at a time) -Requests to adjust some features in AM are not always considered (e.g. the bottom screen cannot be set to small everywhere), while AME support is very dynamic At the same time, I agree that having two app versions can lead to some confusion, and to dispersion of limited resources for the development of those features. Therefore, the discussion should probably focus on the more fundamental divergence between AM and AME which is related to performance, and this might need to be evaluated with cheap devices. In my team/colleagues, some have reported problematic performance issues with AM (with low end devices), but they have not documented it, unfortunately. One of my team member stopped using smartphone data collection as a result. Myself, I have a Huawei P30 Pro (high end device) and I never had performance issue with AM, but I did had several other issues with exports and images, while I never had issues with AME. I hope this helps. I also would like to thank again the whole Arena team. This is a great tool, regardless of this discussion. It has allowed me to improve significantly data collection and data management as it allowed me to move away from MS Access; it has also motivated me to develop more advanced data manipulations with R. Best wishes, Bruno |
