Storymap Crowdsource

[RichardLawrence1]

I am evaluating Story Map Crowdsource for agency use at Arizona Game and Fish.  I have the following suggestions to make the user experience more rich:

1. Link photos with geographic location.
   • How would you would use the feature?  People not only want to click on a map to see the pictures taken at that location, they will ALWAYS see cool pictures and wonder "OMG, where was that picture taken?"
   • How would it help you tell better stories or create them more easily? You could engage people in geography MORE by creating interest in finding out "Where was that awesome photo taken?"
   • What new types of stories could you tell? Stories about where to go to find Gila Monsters or FringeToed Lizards or Elegant Trogons.
   • What new storytelling techniques would it enable? This enables exploratory capabilities that allows the user to make up their own "free-form" story that answers the questions:  "What cool pictures have people submitted and where can I go to see some of these things?"
   • How would your current stories be better? The stories would become more useful and engaging to the public because their interests in where something cool can be seen is piqued!  It would make my stories better because then I could sell it better to the people who are evaluating 8 other photo sharing solutions for our Department and makes the ArcGIS platform more valuable to us at Arizona Game and Fish!
   • How would it improve the process of creating stories? It allows flexibility in story creation and enables us to tell stories in highly utilitarian ways.
2. Offer sort (alphabetic, reverse alphabetic, newest to oldest, oldest to newest)  and search (by date, title, tags, others?) capabilities to enable selection of one or a few desired selection among all the photos.
   • How would you would use the feature? To sort through voluminous content to find the photos I want.
   • How would it help you tell better stories or create them more easily? This particular "story map" is not a conventional story map; rather, it is a catalog of memories and needs sorting/searching capability.
   • What new types of stories could you tell? I can tell stories about where I hunt, fish, or just watch wildlife. This type of story is extremely important to state and federal organizations that need to engage their publics and encourage them to share their experiences to engage others.
   • What new storytelling techniques would it enable? Searching through story memories or focusing on certain aspects of the story.
   • How would your current stories be better? The stories would be better because they are more engaging, more organized, and more helpful to our customers.
   • How would it improve the process of creating stories? Because this type of story map is not a traditional story map, it enables us to push this platform into other types of informative engagement with readers/users.
3. Display larger photo thumbnails in the right hand panel of the map...perhaps a single column showing a scrollable list of endless photos?
   • How would you would use the feature?  As a scrollable (or "rolodex" with the finger on touch screens) single column of images in the information panel of the story map.
   • How would it help you tell better stories or create them more easily? In this type of story (an indexed catalog of memories), having a larger memory provides a more aesthetically pleasing experience).
   • What new types of stories could you tell? Stories where content needs to be quickly moved through to find the image/map location of interest.
   • What new storytelling techniques would it enable? Enables kind of a photo gazette/map location engagement.
   • How would your current stories be better? The stories would be better because they are more engaging, more organized, and more helpful to our customers.
   • How would it improve the process of creating stories? Because this type of story map is not a traditional story map, it enables us to push this platform into other types of informative engagement with readers/users.

[OwenGeo]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! The first one is definitely on our list for the next release, and we will definitely consider your other two good ideas for future releases.

Owen

[RichardLawrence1]

Thank you Owen for the instant feedback! This is an awesome template...we have, I hope, special plans for it.

Richard

Sent from my iPhone

[RichardLawrence1]

Owen -

I have a related observation in Crowdsource Storymap (CS) that arises from real life experience.  We are evaluating CS head to head with another photo submission app that has no mapping capability with it. I think we will, for two of our demographics (hunters and anglers) go with the other app because hunters and anglers typically want to submit photos and brag, but they don't want others to know where they got lucky. Wildlife Watchers, on the other hand, are a bit of the opposite and so CS is still a strong candidate for that public. However, having some additional options would help CS play better in all venues. Some I have already shared with you, but an additional one came up in discussions last week: Providing to the storymap creator the ability to make some of the required fields optional.  Often, potential submitters won't submit because we have too many, or in some cases, ANY, required fields.  I know that some are required, but providing flexibility also makes managing the content and structure of the storymap easier to adapt to certain publics.  Thanks again for listening and I hope to hear soon when the next version of CS is arriving.  Cheers!

Richard

[OwenGeo]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the feedback. We've heard this request from a few other folks as well and are considering it for a future release.

Owen

[RichardLawrence1]

Cool... Thanks for the feedback I guess good minds think a like!

R

Sent from my iPhone