Let us know what you think of maps in Web Forms

[Aly_Blenkin]

We’ve been working on improving map functionality in Web Forms and are getting close to releasing capturing shapes/traces, and editing features that allow Project Managers to fix map-related mistakes from Central.

We’d love feedback from data collectors and form designers on how map interactions feel today. In particular, we’re interested in understanding your experience with capturing points/lines/shapes on a map on both desktop and mobile devices.

Questions

• How is your experience creating a shape or trace on the map?

• How does it feel to place a point using the map or placement-map appearance?

• Are there any moments during these interactions that feel confusing, slow, or unintuitive?

• Are there moments that feel smooth or work especially well?

• If you could change one thing about the experience to better fit your workflow, what would it be?

How to try it

You can test this functionality using the Web Forms preview page and uploading this map question types form.

The experiences feel slightly different on mobile and desktop, so please try out both and let us know what you think! To quickly try it on mobile, use your camera app to scan the QR code

[ahblake]

Are there any moments during these interactions that feel confusing, slow, or unintuitive?

The time required for the long press/click feels quite long, ~1.5s.

Undo only keeps one step - more would be nice, but not critical.

How is your experience creating a shape or trace on the map?

For polygon, on mobile (chrome, android) the point doesn't appear until releasing (manually entered or automatically recorded) but in desktop (chrome, MacOS) the point does appear after the delay.

For line (manually entered or automatically recorded), the delay is the same, and the line doesn't update until the press is released, but the point count does increment on screen before release if a point wasn't already selected. Desktop does show the point and update the line after the delay, then autoselects the point on release. On mobile this means you have to guess if it's long enough, release, fail, try again, or hold for too long, taking more time.

Desktop/mouse also autoselects the last placed point (filled blue), which shows the coordinate, but mobile doesn't autoselect the last point and instead shows the # of points saved for both line and polygon, (unless an existing point is selected, in which case it remains selected, showing the coordinate of it instead of # points saved.)

How does it feel to place a point using the map or placement-map appearance?

For Point that can be manually-entered on map & Point with user confirmation on map
if you are not near the desired location you can't go straight to zooming/panning there and place a point, you must first get location, then zoom pan and place a point. This would be especially annoying for desktop based work remote from the survey location.

Are there moments that feel smooth or work especially well?

Moving points is 'mapbox-like' with no long press/click needed, instant grab and move.

Also the ability to delete a point that isn't the last point is great, to modify a line/shape without having to delete all the way back to the issue.

Seeing the last point as a darker outline colour helps identify it for adding another point, knowing the first point might be useful, I'm unsure

Mousing over a line between points and long pressing to add a new point between them (this is fantastic, and thank you for pointing that out @Aly_Blenkin ) - it's quite clear that you are adding with a mouse as it shows a small circle on the line, but by touch it's not clear until the point is added if you were "on" or "near" the line and you inserted a point between or added another point at the end.

If you could change one thing about the experience to better fit your workflow, what would it be?

Reduce the time to create a point
Adding points between existing points

[seewhy]

Overall, this is great.

How is your experience creating a shape or trace on the map?
Positive! Although the long press / click-hold feels a bit too long (I 'chickened-out' a few times and so it didn't register the point). Adding intermediate vertices is excellent (once you know it is possible).

How does it feel to place a point using the map or placement-map appearance?
I was unable to do this without granting location access (both mobile and desktop) for those 3 questions. So I didn't... But I think @ahblake makes good (geo)points on this subject

Are there any moments during these interactions that feel confusing, slow, or unintuitive?

As above, the delay is just slightly too long to be intuitive (how long is a long-press - slightly longer than other apps, it feels) and it means building a trace / shape might take a while. Isn't it interesting how short my attention span is! If you'd allowed me to do this 10 years ago and I'd have said it's blindingly quick...

It's more of a problem when using touch screen as I can't see when the point is registered under my finger, so releasing too soon is a bit more clunky than with a mouse. Maybe a 'larger icon' flashed up on point-create would help that for the fat-fingered to see that the point has been registered?

On the desktop, when adding intermediate vertices to an existing shape there was a slightly confusing pattern of the highlighted dot - it seemed to jump between points (seems to change both on point create and mouse release), which is a little confusing.

One moment of 'panic' on the mobile - I caught the full screen button by mistake and then couldn't navigate to the rest of the form - I hadn't registered it was 'a thing'. Maybe setting that as a toggle might be a useful visual reminder, certainly on the mobile? The icon for full screen and full extent are quite similar too - not a problem once you know - maybe 'two arrows' rather than 4 might help differentiate more easily (for the old and poor of sight).

- Example full screen icon source (not a recommendation, just a credit of origin!)

Also when pinch zooming, my device changed from zooming the map to zooming the page after a certain level of zoom (obviously when moving from world map to a location, you can't do in a single pinch - it's less likely to occur if you give location access, and want to record a point / trace / shape there) - I think that's probably not an ODK problem, but interesting and not intuitive experience.

In full screen mode on my mobile, the coordinated / # points saved box is not visible - this doesn't feel right, as it is presumably there to reassure the enumerator...

The icons are in a different order to Collect (Old Dogs, New Tricks) - good that two of the icons are identical though!

*** Are there moments that feel smooth or work especially well?**

• The add intermediate vertex feature is excellent.
• The move vertex works well (large dots are easier to work with than on Collect) and
• Delete any highlighted vertex is also really useful.
• +/- zoom buttons are useful (see above!)
• Not needing to use 'two-finger-pan' on a touch screen is very welcome (seems to be 'a thing' for some web sites, which makes navigating maps less intuitive for old people like me)

If you could change one thing about the experience to better fit your workflow, what would it be?

Shorten the delay on point create

And because I'm greedy and want 2 things, highlight the start point on a shape to make it easier to see where you started (maybe red outline, white fill, then the blue fill could still be used if it is highlighted to move) - obviously if this vertex is deleted it needs to handle that, but maybe it could be transferred to the new vertex 1 by default?

Ach, why not, let's go for 3 things...
maybe an 'info' icon to show the capability / features / explain the meaning of icons to numpties like me. Like a guidance hint. Fortunately I read @ahblake post before writing this, so I discovered (and tried out) things like delete any vertex... It's great if you know, but how do you find out when using for the first time (or repeating after a while). This would also be welcome on Collect - I keep having to write instructions (not ideal in a question hint as you have to describe the icons!), especially for the zoom to extent of data icon, which is useful when using / filtering geo-entities...

[Aly_Blenkin]

Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback @ahblake @seewhy!

I’m going to hold off on commenting for now so I don’t bias the discussion. If others have feedback we would love to hear from you!

[mathieubossaert]

Hi Aly,

Thanks a lot for the work and examples
I have nothing to add to Andrew and Chris's tests and comments

[Aly_Blenkin]

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback! Your insights directly shaped these latest improvements.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s new, which you can test on the Web Forms preview:

Smoother point placement

• Removed "Long press" to place points: We heard that the 1.5s delay felt slow. You can now place points instantly.

Optimized mobile experience

• Immersive full-screen mode on mobile: The map now becomes interactive only after a tap, expanding to full screen. This prevents accidental scrolling and provides a focused workspace where all tools are visible.

• Improved inline question visibility: We reduced the inline map height so you can still see surrounding form questions without getting lost in the map.

Workflow enhancements

• Intuitive icons: We replaced the full-screen icon with a more recognizable version.

• Improved placement-map experience: We removed the overlay, and saving a location is now a simple tap, confirmed by a “Point saved” in the bottom bar.

• Unlimited undo: You’re no longer limited to a single "undo" action. You can now step back through your entire action history.

• Visual highlights: The last point placed is outlined in dark blue, making it easy to distinguish between your starting and ending points.

• Button hints: on desktop you can hover to find out what each button does. On mobile, we could add an info button, as we’ve done with the invalid polygon work in Collect.

We know there is a lot more we could do to improve the experience and we plan to keep iterating alongside our other exciting features we have coming!

[seewhy]

Changes look good. Thank you. I really like the immersive 'activation' on the mobile

A few further comments...
The point marker with green circle is slightly confusing... I would have thought that the recorded location should be coincident with the centre of the circle as well as the 'point' of the marker. But maybe that' me not following convention? But with manual placement, I'm not clear what the circle represents

On the mobile, I am having trouble storing data on manual line (but not manual polygon). Might just be me, but tapping doesn't activate placement, the map moves instead (and long press doesn't seem to have any effect - even for 1.5 seconds ). Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

On the mobile 'point with user confirmation on map' - if you deny location access, then dismiss the 'cannot access location' message, to exit the question / disable map, there is a cross at the top left - which is different from all the other map type behaviour - maybe it's just an overlay? If you grant access then it behaves as other maps. Maybe dismissing the message needs to also close the overlay?

In the advanced box (like this idea!), the guidance hint for polygon would be useful to remind the user that the first and last point need to be the same.

I would support the info button on mobile

[ahblake]

• geopoint placement-map
  • mobile - in non fullscreen, only 'expand' icon visible in portrait mode, but in landscape, with less vertical area, the 'jump to point' and 'get current location' icons appear.
• geopoint with maps appearance
  • mobile - intermittently when tapping remove it flashes up the get location button but immediately jumps back to the captured location (not sure if recapturing automatically or cancelling as I wasn't running around to confirm), not every time but ~30%. Couldn't reproduce on desktop
• tap point to see coordinate/infinite undo and paste/upload GeoJSON - very very nice!
  • There's a next to 'Paste data in ODK format' that looks like a guidance note, but I can't display it. Cursor changes to a hand on desktop, but still no on-click.
• delete - for trace and shape this is greyed out and I can't clear all, but selecting a point enables deleting a single point. Different to Collect where after you pause collecting you can delete all (but can't select and delete points)
  • ahh ok... If I tap ON a line segment or inside a shape, it adds a new point if on / near a line and selects the line/shape, then delete all is possible
• it's not obvious to me how to auto collect points for a line/shape, or is this not supported yet?
• interactive only on fullscreen on mobile - makes sense that you need expanded view on mobile device, but I backed out of the form a couple of times by tapping '<' back button which activated browser 'back', when I'm used to Collect being 'exit map', unsure if you can intercept the command.
• Like @seewhy I occasionally have trouble getting line and shape points to record on mobile with taps (that are not slight tap and move) not registered, but other times no problem. Had to try very hard to not register a point on desktop

[JenniferQ]

@ahblake

I occasionally have trouble getting line and shape points to record on mobile with taps (that are not slight tap and move) not registered…

@ahblake Just to make sure I understand correctly, you're saying that “tapping and holding” for a second doesn't add vertices? It’s different from a quick click on a desktop, right?

[ahblake]

This shows screen taps so you can see the taps with no point recorded. 5x failed taps in a row above Madagascar plus some others

And going slower and more deliberately:

[JenniferQ]

@ahblake

it's not obvious to me how to auto collect points for a line/shape, or is this not supported yet?

Yes, the auto-collect point isn’t supported in this release of maps yet.

@ahblake

Like @seewhy I occasionally have trouble getting line and shape points to record on mobile with taps

The video was super helpful! It’s fixed.

@ahblake

mobile - intermittently when tapping remove it flashes up the get location button but immediately jumps back to the captured location

Good catch, this is fixed.

@ahblake

There's a next to 'Paste data in ODK format' that looks like a guidance note, but I can't display it. Cursor changes to a hand on desktop, but still no on-click.

This feature is accessible on desktop after a few seconds of hovering. We are designing an improved version that will appear immediately and will also be compatible with mobile devices. We’ll notify you once it’s released.

[ahblake]

I tried it with the changes - it all feels much nicer now, everything creates/moves/removes/etc as expected, no overly long press requirements or missed inputs.

Only thing i keep doing is using < back to exit map fullscreen and exiting the form completely, as I am expecting the 'exit map' action from Collect - if the action can't be intercepted, can the page at least warn 'you have unsaved data are you sure you want to leave?' or something like that.