Suggestions for the SAC App/Web

Ideas
1

A while back Thomas asked for suggestions for potential improvements for SAC, here are ours.

  1. The map would benefit hugely by two additional options;
    A) Option to centre the map on the current location of the user.
    B) Option to centre the map on an address typed in by the user.

  2. The map does not handle multiple, closely located artworks at all well. If there are multiple artworks closely located then often some are simply not accessible from the map because, even at full zoom, they are hidden underneath another artwork, nor is there any indication on the map that there are multiple artworks present. A SAC user would simply think there is only one artwork in the location.

  3. In the Hunter Artworks screen it would be nice to be able to search specific fields (eg artist name, address). Currently we have many situations where it is difficult to search, for example we have an artist whose name is “Ling”, but if we search on his name then all the records for the suburb “Collingwood” come up too because it contains the word “Ling”.

  4. In the Hunter Artworks screen it would be nice to have “check boxes” or something to limit the search results for;
    A) Items that are in “Draft” mode”
    B) Items that are “Removed”
    C) Items that are missing an Artist Name.

  5. It can be annoying that artworks that are “Seen” or “Liked” by Community Members pop up to the top of the Artworks list. This is because they push recent edits, and “Draft” records down in the list where they can easily get lost. I think that “Seen” or “Liked” artworks would be better shown in the Activity Log or similar screen.

  6. I have seen others say on the forum that it is good practise for Hunters to mark Seen on artworks to keep record of active artworks, but I have noticed that once I have marked an artwork as “Seen” I cannot (at a later date) mark it as “Seen” again, it appears I am only allowed to mark an artwork with one Community Note. What is the reason for this limitation?

  7. There is inconsistency between the app and the web version as to what can be seen for an artwork. For example on the web version I cannot see Community Notes and on the App I cannot see Created Date. Let’s make all the critical data available in both places.

  8. I think the Cities button when you looking at the App would be better labelled Search because it is where you need to go to search for Cities, Artists, Organisations, Festivals etc.

  9. What is the difference between an “Active” and “Inactive” hunter? We only have two active hunters for Melbourne, the other four haven’t done anything for months, one for years I believe, yet all show as active, and the two that have been inactive for longest always seem to show as the first icons displayed.

  10. The “Remove Marker” button should be re-labelled as “Permanently Delete” or something similar. Given that “Removed” is the word used for an Archived artwork it is too easily confused, which has resulted in errors and artworks being permanently deleted by accident. Archived is the word used on the Artist screen - perhaps it should be used instead of Removed for consistency.

  11. When Community Notes are added by app users the notification we get for items in the Inbox always seems to be at least double the number of artworks that have been marked? Then multiples (usually 2) seem to go off the “Pending” total each time one is dealt with.

Also, sometimes the Inbox item seems to disappear without having to hit the “Mark Done” button, but sometimes you need to hit “Mark Done”, not sure why that is.

2 Likes
2

2:Very recently we added something new(or better to say
 remind) to the how to add artworks guide: avoid making clusters and upload different works from 1 artist on 1 location (check hunter forum). And indeed, numerous works in Melbourne are uploaded on 1 address, by the same artists. 3 Stencils or paints from 1 artist on the same wall: One artwork, and not three
 this helps you to avoid clusters and make it more userfriendly. Hunterhygiene.

3: On the hunter dashboard you can search on the street name, just checked this. Typed a mainstreet name of my city Oostende and it showed all the works in that street.
6: If you delete your note, you can push the seen again ;-). It’s how I always do it
 . Perfectly possible.

3

Stef, thanks for the response,

Re 2) above
I just read that response from you on the “clusters” and the amended artwork upload. Interesting, because we have been posting like we have, after reading an earlier post from Thomas (I think) where he suggested separate posts for each artist in a collaboration wall. So, conflicting advice sort of.

Personally I think the benefits to the artist of having both their murals (or stencils or whatever) appear on their artist page outweigh the cluster issue. Often the murals (or stencils) may be done at separate times (often months apart, but many artists return to the same locations), it seems much more appropriate that these are separate artworks, and they should all appear on the artists page.

The other issue having multiple artworks on the one “artwork record” has caused for us in the past is accidental duplication of artworks, because the second (and subsequent) murals that are posted together on one artwork won’t be seen when you look at an artists page, and therefore a hunter can think an artwork is missing and add a duplicate.

Re 3)
Yes I know I can search on address, but the issue is that you only have one search field, and if I’m looking for the artist “Ling”, I also get all the records where those letters appear in the address field (eg “Collingwood”). So my suggestion is to give separate fields for the searchable fields, so I can type “Ling” in Artist name to get the result I want. Could then also (as an example) look for a particular artist in a particular suburb or street.

Re 6)
I had not realised you can delete notes (I don’t use the app much, mainly the web version), but now I know you can. It does make it a little painful though I think, it’s bad enough now having to search for the record, without probably trying once to hit seen, getting the error, deleting the note, hitting seen again 
 too much effort. So, my question remains, why the limitation on one note?

4

Hello, hope you don’t mind me adding to the suggestions list (wasn’t sure if it should go into another post, but similar topics might get merged into one).

Before that, for 2: Today I mapped out the majority of Walls Out West in Penrith (below), the majority of these are in a line. Initially there were a couple at the precinct that were all just inputted with the one address (i.e. 2115 Castlereagh Road) with the exact pinned location, but after shuffling them slightly to their rightful spots, the mega zoom present on both the SAC App/Web versions help to tap/click each one individually.

image
image1080×1126 119 KB

Some more suggestions/potential improvements for SAC, many are very minor:

  1. The description of each City’s page has “Let us show you around this awesome town with its # street art masterpieces.” (Web) and “These fine folks are responsible for documenting # artworks in this town.” (App) I’m thinking the wording could be revised to be less based on settlement hierarchy (i.e. village, town, city, metropolis, etc.), maybe to something like “this place” or “here”, or potentially just be generalised to City (y’know, Street Art Cities)? But it might not make sense for a hamlet/very small village? Not sure I’m making much sense. :stuck_out_tongue:

  2. When an artwork is added to a city with no artist (say Sydney), the home page says “New artwork added in Australia”. Can this be changed to the city it’s been added into rather than the encompassing country?

  3. I’ve just come across an issue when creating a route (Walls Out West) and trying to add artworks that are untitled and/or have no artist. The only way to add artworks is to search by the artwork title or artist. Example 1 is the untitled green zombie artwork by an unknown artist, and example 2 is an untitled Phibs artwork where many other untitled ones exist throughout Sydney. Can it also be searched by the locality/suburb also to help aid in the search? My preference would be is to be able to select existing markers on a map and then arrange the artworks on a route around that with the existing functionality.

  4. I’m not sure if this is on the mobile version, but on the web version when I click on the quote button, it saves the artwork as is. I’ve actually been doing the quoted text as the very last thing when editing an artwork as it conveniently saves it. Not sure if this is the intended behaviour.

  5. More badges! Maybe an additional tier for after Super Hunter (which is 250)? A globetrotting badge for hunting in many different cities/countries? A fan badge for adding 25 different artworks of a single artist (need to find someone who’s actually done 25
 oh wait)?

I actually haven’t used the SAC app, particularly as the lone wolf hunter for Sydney and surrounds (there are a few other Sydneysiders who take some great shots for local street art, but I haven’t reached out). There would most definitely be dynamics as a hunter team for a city and a real motivation to use the SAC app.

Plus for the additional ones when I reintro’d myself just over a month ago, including a bulk edit and/or table format function, expanded hunter profiles, those too. Something to help filter out the artworks in the dashboard where there is specifically no description or artist, and where the photo credits are missing. And a lot more gamification. The street art hunts are absolutely real and thrilling in their own way.

Hoping for some more involvement and activity in the forums, so I may post randomly here or there. I probably should get started with my locale. Cheers SAC, glad to be back on board in full force!

4 Likes
5

Ok, while doing a nightshift I finally took the time to read and understand this properly. So let me cut to the chase and answer/ respond to some of these items.

@Andrew_Haysom
1. The map would benefit hugely by two additional options;
A) Option to centre the map on the current location of the user.
B) Option to centre the map on an address typed in by the user.
do you mean to have these options in user modus, meaning while using the map or in hunter modus when adding artworks?

2. The map does not handle multiple, closely located artworks at all well. If there are multiple artworks closely located then often some are simply not accessible from the map because, even at full zoom, they are hidden underneath another artwork, nor is there any indication on the map that there are multiple artworks present. A SAC user would simply think there is only one artwork in the location.
The infamous cluster issue! It’s true that artworks in a very close vicinity are hidden behind multiple dots. A number dot would be helpgul, but the we still need to find a solution to zoom in extra to show all markers. @thomas @Noa_Heutz any thoughts on that.
On the other hand like we talked about it on our first video call, be carefull with stencil and paste up alleys. It’s hard to keep track and stay up-to-date and clusters are bound to happen there. Maybe a permanent marker like we have for ‘Hall of Fames’ is a better option, where you can write some lines about the regular artist who dwell here.

3. In the Hunter Artworks screen it would be nice to be able to search specific fields (eg artist name, address). Currently we have many situations where it is difficult to search, for example we have an artist whose name is “Ling”, but if we search on his name then all the records for the suburb “Collingwood” come up too because it contains the word “Ling”.
That’s actually a good idea, i think we need to think about which filter options to install. Will ‘artist name’ and ‘address’ be enough?

4. In the Hunter Artworks screen it would be nice to have “check boxes” or something to limit the search results for;
A) Items that are in “Draft” mode”
B) Items that are “Removed”
C) Items that are missing an Artist Name.
Maybe we could incorporate this into the filters mentioned above to minimize development of new features

5. It can be annoying that artworks that are “Seen” or “Liked” by Community Members pop up to the top of the Artworks list. This is because they push recent edits, and “Draft” records down in the list where they can easily get lost. I think that “Seen” or “Liked” artworks would be better shown in the Activity Log or similar screen.
This remains a problem, the question is what to use to prioritize this list: ‘date added’ or ‘date created’

6. I have seen others say on the forum that it is good practise for Hunters to mark Seen on artworks to keep record of active artworks, but I have noticed that once I have marked an artwork as “Seen” I cannot (at a later date) mark it as “Seen” again, it appears I am only allowed to mark an artwork with one Community Note. What is the reason for this limitation?
The ‘seen’ option is actually introduced for users or hunters who visit other territories. It makes sense that you mark an artwork you’ve seen only once, since you probably not going to visit again soon. Why should you as hunter mark artworks as seen in your area, since you have acces to your database and ‘remove’ an artwork when necesary?
But as Stef said you can remove the notes.

Correct, noted

good suggestion, added an action in our system

There’s should be a automatisation behind this, maybe @thomas or @Noa_Heutz can clarify this?

Good one, added an action for it

@thomas @Noa_Heutz any thoughts on this one

Okay hope this helps?

6

Won’t stop now, after handling @Andrew_Haysom suggestions


seems like an idea, let’s see if we can come to a kind of consensus on this

An artwork with no artist should not be active at all, instead shown as draft.

Can’t you add it based on adress?

not exactly sure what you mean here, what’s that ‘quote button’ you’re talking about?

something to think about

7

I don’t particularly agree with this, especially where there are artworks that they either don’t have a signature or are rather difficult to identify the artist. I’m not particularly on board with not publishing artworks that don’t have the artist identified. Someone else will access the app and see that the artist is not identified, they will be encouraged to send in a community note to disclose the artist (thanks to Andrew for a note identifying a work by Deb).
While I try to do my diligent research when creating artworks, some really just evade my efforts. Have a look at the SAC homepage currently, several at the moment have been added without an artist. Will they be hidden because of no artist? Or is it preferred to instead use ‘Unknown’? At the moment, artworks only need a location and image to be made visible (see below).
image
If this is the case, then I’d like some more advanced features in the filter function of the dashboard for more finer tuning if the non-artist artworks are going to be turned back into drafts. And also something that can help filter which also don’t have a description, or photos that aren’t credited to a photographer. This mostly applies to the rough uploads I did back in June-July 2021, or just filling in details where I become a hunter elsewhere (coming soon).

image
image1152×296 127 KB

image
image911×250 14.4 KB

This one, as pointed out in the arrow, maybe it’s the “indent” button? Whenever I click it (or rather, anything in this row including the Bold, Italics, Hyperlink or Bullet Points icons, it just saves the artwork as is after applying the formatting. Please try it on the PC version.

While you can do so with the address when searching for artworks in the city


image
image944×661 102 KB

trying to search for it in the Route editor does not come up with anything. Typing in the suburb/city (i.e. “Penrith”) also comes up with nothing.
image

I hope this makes sense, and apologies in advance if I come off as
 rather sharp. I want to do things right and sometimes I talk too much. I just really like to be involved in something I’m rather passionate about and have a lot of creative power to finely curate.

8

I agree with Briggs that it should be possible for us to add artworks where we have been unable to identify the artist.

What we have done is established an “Artist” called “Unknown - Melbourne”, an idea we stole from Oisten from Bergen. This at least gives us a way to search for our unknowns and review them occassionally, or to send the URL for them to fellow hunters to ask, “Do you know any of these?”.

Like Briggs we have done extensive research for each and every one of the “Unknown - Melbourne” artworks we have loaded (14 to date) and have been unable to identify the artist, but we believe they are artworks that are significant enough and good enough to warrant inclusion.

9

Tim,
Thanks so much for your responses, here’s my replies to some of your comments.

1. do you mean to have these options in user modus, meaning while using the map or in hunter modus when adding artworks?

Yes, I meant for users in user mode. I think it would make the app far easier to use than scrolling around the map looking for an area or address.

2. On the other hand like we talked about it on our first video call, be carefull with stencil and paste up alleys. It’s hard to keep track and stay up-to-date and clusters are bound to happen there. Maybe a permanent marker like we have for ‘Hall of Fames’ is a better option, where you can write some lines about the regular artist who dwell here.

Yes, that is what we have done for some of the paste-up artists - we have just loaded one artwork for a particular lane in that artists name with a comment like this

“The art of Loui Jover is an iconic part of the Melbourne street art scene. His wonderful art, in the form of paste-ups and stickers is found in many locations across the city. One such location are the laneways of Fitzroy. If you start a walk at the laneway that runs north from Rose St, alongside the Rose St Car Park / Fitzroy Mills Market, and walk north all the way through to Alexandra Parade, you’re sure to find a number of Jover’s works. The ones shown in this post may not be there, but you’re sure to find some.”

I think this is a better solution than using a “Place” or “Hall of Fame” because it at least establishes a link and places the artwork on the artists page, the Hall of Fame would not do this, other than in a text description.

3. & 4.

That’s actually a good idea, i think we need to think about which filter options to install. Will ‘artist name’ and ‘address’ be enough?

Yes I think Artist Name and Address, along with the “check boxes” or filters mentioned in item 4 would be enough.

5. This remains a problem, the question is what to use to prioritize this list: ‘date added’ or ‘date created

I am not sure what different dates are stored for each artwork by the system, but ideally I think the Hunter Artworks screen sequence should be in “Date Modified” sequence, but only for modifications made by Hunters and Moderators, not for Community actions like “Seems” and “Likes”

6. Why should you as hunter mark artworks as seen in your area, since you have acces to your database and ‘remove’ an artwork when necesary?

Yes you’re right, and we are certainly doing that (removing artworks when we see they are gone/tagged etc), but I started doing the “Seen” thing after reading Stef’s note where he said he did it, and I just thought it might be good for our other Hunters to know that pieces are still around, but as noted it would be better seen in Activity Log or somewhere different to the Artworks screen.

10

These are excellent, thanks Andrew!

Number 3, 4, 5 and 10 are now incorporated in the platform (without the ‘no artist name’ filter for now, but I’ve added this to our backlog).

This should now be the case – the modified date of the artwork being updated by these actions was indeed inadvertent, and should now only happen for hunter and mod actions.

1 Like
11

Thanks @brggsr for your additions!

I’ve added these!

Damn, that’s a bad bug! Thanks for pointing that out, fixed!

1 Like
12

Awesome work Thomas, thanks so much, those additional filters and search options on the Artworks screen add a whole bunch of additional functionality. Love it!

2 Likes
13

This is great, thank you so much Thomas and Tim for bringing it to the attention. Happy to see these! Looks like there’s a little bit of an evolution on the Street Art Community forums too, a nice banner.

More as I think of them, for now I need to process over 2700+ photos
 (and that’s before they’ve even made their way into Street Art Cities!)

14

Glad you both like them!

15

Hey.

So I thought I’d open this back up three months into my hunting prowess. Here are some suggestions and general feedback.

=======================================================

Suggestions and Thoughts

Qualifying onto the SAC App
It might not really be a secret, but for a city to be added onto the Street Art Cities app it needs to have eight artworks. Then when the next day roll overs, it automatically appears as a city on the app.

Here is a list of NSW cities and Canberra, for what is available on the app and what isn’t. As one can deduce, there is a distinct cut-off of eight. Sadly, if you do not have eight artworks, the city won’t be featured on the SAC app.

image
image782×1065 21.7 KB

Which is why I was very particularly detailed about a previous post I wrote Definition of a SAC City, which was not particularly well-read. It follows a specific order:

A. You may start off your hunt in your capital to represent the whole country/state (unless it’s completely on the other side). If (and only if) your capital is not yet on the map, then start with a major city. Otherwise, if you do not have enough in your starting city, stay hunting in the capital/major city.
B. If your city has grown with many artworks, break off into the smaller regional-level city/region/etc.
C. And if you are a smaller town break down even further! Unless you are within a major city (i.e. Cronulla in Sydney, Shinjuku in Tokyo, or Westminster in London, maybe a trail will do?)

The contrapositive may also apply:

C. If your small village/town does not have enough artworks to stand on its own in the app, join the regional major town/city.
B. If your region does not have enough, join the major city or capital in the state.
A. Which is why some people would prefer to hunt and document everything into one big city before branching and breaking off into others (if needed, which most of the time, it isn’t).

So many cities, particularly those with silo art are not included in the SAC app because they don’t have enough artworks. Simple as that. Quirindi, which won Australia’s Best Street Art Award for 2023 does not feature onto the SAC app because the town itself only has seven artworks in total.

I strongly believe there needs to be a framework which should be set and adhered to. I understand SAC is a global product with many minute nuances, but government (local councils and states) are transparent enough to map and divide out, so too will be hunters. But this current system means app-users (maybe 80% of traffic) miss out on many regional cities and silo art. Doesn’t matter if the town is rather fully complete (i.e. Grenfell’s one silo artwork), it won’t be in the SAC app, only visible on web.

I can flesh this out further with even more examples if you’re interested, and practical examples (i.e. many silo towns in Victoria could merge and actually have enough together to be in the app, alongside its regional city).

=======================================================

Confusion over mini-regions as cities
A few weeks ago I requested the creation of the cities of Port Stephens and Southern Highlands, but was not able to because they’re “kind of a region”? So right now Nelson Bay and Bowral represent them respectively. It’s a bit confusing because Central Coast NSW and Blue Mountains NSW exist as regions that represent their areas very well. Otherwise Gosford and Katoomba would represent both of them instead, leaving out the rest of the area (they’re not particularly representative of what’s been mapped throughout).

What’s the guidelines regarding this? Also can we please get rid of the ‘NSW’ or ‘VIC’ or whatever state is at the end of each of the cities? It’s been a while since I’ve requested for this because only the tech guys can do this (plus Portland NSW to Lithgow). Oh, and West AustraliĂ« from the two in WA also.

======================================================

Region/State View or Country View
I would like to see another parent layer in Street Art Cities: the Country/Region View! In this view, you can see:

  • Nearby states/territories or countries
  • The overall progress of the region and total artworks
  • All of its hunters.

image
image1650×1051 103 KB

I’d also like to see some more layers and sorting. Particularly for this case below where all of my cities are listed in alphabetical order, but not by country. A second level sorting would be great, either by country or preferably by state.
Below, we have all of them in New South Wales, one in Western Australia, and one in Korea?! This dropdown list can get a bit long. That way, the Richmond in Victoria won’t be confused with the Richmond in New South Wales, or the Richmond in Queensland.

image
image284×738 23.1 KB

=======================================================

Custom Icons
In the Tips for optimizing your images post, I learned that it would be preferred to add the overview image first, followed by the rest of the details. While I have reversed this, I’m still a bit on the fence.

I’d like to be able to adjust the icon (based on either the main photo or maybe a custom upload), to add that additional amount of curator power for the map.

For example, for long-artworks, this might work rather than the full overview as the icon. Two examples below for what I would use as icons (right would be the zoom I would use):

image
image

Some icons look too small to get that grasp of grandeur, so I’d like to try and reel in the viewer to click through by capturing them with the detail first. The opposite also works too, but I’d like this to be led by choice.

=======================================================

Change the Location, Keep the Address
Geolocation is by far a feature that, although has been resolved with a considerable solution, the underlying issue still remains. When even slightly adjusting the pin on the map, the SAC dashboard will change it an auto-generated address or sometimes worse, attach it to a business or building.

For example, in Kempsey, the only address in a laneway of artworks should be Savages Lane, Kempsey. Instead the artworks are incorrectly listed as the following addresses:

  • Centrepoint Arcade, Smith St
  • Shop 1/14 Smith St
  • Shop 19-20 Centrepoint Arcade, 14 Smith St
  • 18 Smith Street
  • 11 Clyde Street
  • 16-20 Clyde Street

The problem is, if you type in Savages Lane, the pin will take you there, but when you move it, it will revert to either. Placing the pin, but typing in Savages Lane resets its address.
There needs to be a way to lock the address within the dashboard and not let it change when moving the pin. One typical example would be Hosier Lane, there might not be a particular number for where the artwork resides, but try to move it around the top part and you’ll end up with auto-filled Flinders Lane instead. Let me type in the correct address (i.e. Savages Lane, Kempsey), click some sort of checkbox to stop the address from changing, and then let me move the pin to where it is exactly, without it changing to Smith or Clyde Street. That would solve some hesitation around geopositioning.

=======================================================

Adding More Than Five Artists
Some artworks have more than five artists. Not just the main directing or leading artist, but every single individual. If the artist doesn’t already appear in the database, there is no option to add one and I’ll get “No options” instead. Would you be able to change this limit to say
 maybe 10?

Leon

=======================================================

Dates?!
No I am not asking for a coffee date here (maybe later). Is there any particular reason why the SAC dashboard uses the MM-DD-YYYY format? And then in the front-facing web version, it uses YYYY-MM-DD? Can we try to standardise, maybe by DD-MM-YYYY? My preference, unless this was made in the US.

Also, there are times when we do not know the exact date, but we might know the month, or the year. Can we slightly change this input so that we can remove DD and MM if we don’t know the particular date? It would save having to revert to MM/01/YYYY to state that it was painted within that month, but it may confuse artworks that were actually painted on the actual first day of the month. And a worded date for any front-facing sites: i.e. 21-12-2023 should be worded as 21 December 2023, 02-2024 should be read as February 2024 if DD is blank, 1999 should read as 1999 with the others blank.

=======================================================

Revising the Tags Section
Perhaps you might want to look at the backend and see which are the widely used tags, and which ones aren’t. However, I think there could be some useful additions and some that are rather obsolete as follows:

  • Artist nationality: increasingly obsolete. Instead of each of the artist’s artworks all Artist nationality, I believe it should be captured in the artist’s page. Even better if they have control of it to add that in themselves in their bio!

  • Height: I would tend to write its dimensions in the artwork description. It’s also not very useful as a tag because how many artworks are we looking to find with the tag “17 metres”?

  • Photographer: What’s the difference between using this tag for Photographer and adding the Photographer Name for each image? I think this is duplicative and could be removed.

  • Width: See Height. It’s a bit of something that could be trimmed.

Maybe we could add a new tag or work on the existing Artwork status tag?

  • Condition: This is objective. When there are a few community notes stating that an artwork has been tagged, what do we do with it? Write in the description that it’s been tagged? Or that it’s colours are significantly faded? Or if it’s obscured by a building or growing vines or something? We could try to add something like condition or status, maybe like a five-level scale?

  • Last updated: I’d like to request an automatic tag that updated itself based on the last time the artwork was updated on the dashboard. This help gives SAC users a bit more insight into an artwork. An artwork painted in 2013, but a hunter updated it a week ago? Looks like it’ll be there for sure! An artwork painted in 2019, but uploaded in 2020? Not sure if it is still there four years later


=======================================================

Personal Stats and Profile
Below is a mockup of what stats might be measured on the app. I’d like a place to be able to see my aggregate stats across all cities (the only one I see is the city page where it shows how much has been hunted) and tracking my hunter journey so far. Here’s what it could look like on the profile page (this example is a mock-up from Google Maps). Is there a way to see our stats?

image
image523×502 47.4 KB

=======================================================

All the Photos I Upload are Mine
Filling and copy-pasting my name in each of the photos could be better automated. Sometimes it’s two or three, other times it’s more than 10. Can there be a function that will auto-fill any empty photographer names to have the name of the hunter who uploaded them? For the most part, it will generally be the hunter who has also taken the photo they have uploaded too, but if they have got it with permission from somewhere else, they can add the source’s name instead and it won’t autofill to the hunter’s name because it’s already filled with someone else’s.
Do we always assume hunters have uploaded their own photos unless otherwise specified? For the ones I added to in Perth, I added the original hunter’s name to each of the existing photos.

=======================================================

SAC app marker clustering and density
While the web version of SAC is wonderful, this change hasn’t flowed through to the mobile version yet (neither has the disambiguation option). Will this flow through to the mobile app sometime?

=======================================================

Bugs & Improvements

Loading Tags
For every single artwork I upload or update, I have to wait five seconds for this spinning wheel in the tags section to load, mainly because I want to add information such as the Date Painted and/or Festival. This has become very annoying over time.
Can this section be loaded in the background of the div, or maybe pre-load some tags by default such as Date Added? I remember it used to have a few which appeared by default before an update in January?

image

=======================================================

Date created/removed and Camera used
As already expressed above, except it shows the 24-hour time as well, down to the millisecond. Everything from the T onwards (as below) should be removed.
Also, while I appreciate the camera used tag, I strongly believe this metadata should be stored within each of the photos themselves instead of with the overarching artwork itself. As I tend to do, I like to finely curate artworks, even if it means uploading my photos to existing hunted artworks. So if the existing camera used is a Huawei ELE-L29, but I’ve now added in my photos from a Canon EOS 200D II, what should I do? Remove the camera used?

image

Image metadata is for the most part, harmless if you get rid of the location. I’d like for it to capture dates as well, so many different hunters can contribute to an artwork which shows it change or hold up over time. Or do you only want the original hunter’s photos on the one that they’ve hunted themselves?

=======================================================

There are a few more that I’ve mentioned (probably twice now) over the past few months, but I think a lot of development has happened this year. Sorting by artist name (or whether they have an artist or not) in all ‘All artworks’ page, leaderboards of some sort, and other sorts of things.

I’ll keep on asking for advice and plug in my ideas/feedback over time (hopefully this wasn’t too confusing, or too long). I know I’d like to have more people join as fellow hunters across New South Wales (I really should get that call out), but slowly I really do hope people do pick this up and recognise the work that you all and every hunter pits into this.

Anywho, time really does fly, 3 months of 2024 has already passed. Still a lot more hunting to do, although far less given there is no more Daylight Saving Time. Darker mornings, already sunset by 5:30pm after next weekend. Not optimal hunting. Lots more to do around Sydney.

All the best!
J

4 Likes
16

Hey Briggs,
A lot of good ideas here and this is just a quick response before I go to bed, but I am not sure about the 8 artworks to qualify we have a number that have less than that Nullawil and Murtoa for example only have one each (silos) and Sea Lake has less than eight too.

Couldn’t agree more with the Location vs Address thing too.
Andrew

17

That’s an amazing list!

I heard Noa already reached out to discuss some of these in the next couple of weeks, but just some quick points that stand out to me:

Yeah, I think the app needs a bit more of a conceptional overhaul, which I’ve been thinking about for a while. It’s very city-specific, whereas the website has been moving more into a global community where city borders have less of a strict meaning (with the map also showing artworks outside of the current city, etc). I think we should have more of this in the app as well, which would solve the needing to have a minimum number of artworks per city.

Fair, I think the mods have also been asking for a way to change city names, so I think we can add that in the next week or so, and then let the mods do some cleanup.

This is super close to a sketch I did a few months ago, had a similar idea! Cool to see you mocking it up!

1 Like
18

More things to consider/add:

  • Dark mode: for both the app, dashboard and forum. What can I say, I like everything in the dark. Kind of like simulating a ‘theatre mode’, makes it look more dramatic.

  • Pictures by/Photo captions: When multiple hunters/artists are adding in their images, it just starts to list everyone’s different photos and there’s no indication as to whose photo is whose. Can there be something like a small caption at the bottom to indicate who took what picture? Maybe when clicking the individual image? Example below:

image
image1799×1224 149 KB

It could even accommodate a custom caption (probably not
). One example is this outdoor gallery of Tocumwal Lane in Canberra. Pictures by have three different people, but I can’t see any indicators that differentiate who took what photo.

  • Get the info pack page: There is a stray “Create your own forms” line on this page. Should this be hidden/can we hide this?

I think I will leave it at that for now. Running thoughts!