News — 23 September, 2019
Making a New MapCampaigner
Kicking off new work to redevelop workflows within MapCampaigner
MapCampaigner has some exciting new features coming soon! As we look to consistently improve our tools based on user input, we are kicking off a new phase of MapCampaigner development to address significant gaps in the utility of the tool. Last month we kicked off a user-centered design process to start to plan new features to expand MapCampaigner from a progress tracking and quality monitoring tool to an end-to-end mapping campaign management platform.
Planning and conducting field data collection projects is not an easy task. It requires organizations to assess, prepare, and then monitor using a wide variety of tools across each step. MapCampaigner has been a tool that has helped out during one part of this process — monitoring the quality of data going to OSM. Users have been able to create project areas to run assessments on the “quality” of the data based on the tags you define. This has given mapping organizers the ability to see what work has been done and what needs to be fixed.
What are we planning this fall?
During our initial research with users, we’ve heard a need for better management of common field mapping management tools such as tile creation, management of an area of interest (AOI) /survey boundaries and creation of paper atlases. These features are similar to features commonly found in OpenStreetMap field mapping tools like FieldPapers, and MBTiles processing tools. By combining elements of common OpenStreetMap field mapping workflows these new MapCampianger features aim to reduce the number of tools and barrier to entry for bootstrapping a new field mapping campaign.
What timeline should we expect?
We’ve already kicked off our initial user research but soon we will ramp up our development efforts with a user-centered design sprint followed by feature development sprints. We began our design process in mid-September and start feature development as soon as October 2019. After some great discussions at the HOT Summit and State of the Map in Heidelberg, Germany we are close to having a full wireframe prototype.
How can I get involved?
We will be sharing our progress here and on Github. If you’d like to get involved or what to catch the latest on the development, reach out on the #mapcampaigner Slack channel or look to join the next Tech Working Group meeting.