crsdc / badgerapp

Badger Watch: recognise, record and report badger persecution in England and Wales. An app developed with Flutter for Android and iOS.

Badger Watch

A free mobile app to help you recognise, record and report badger persecution and related wildlife crime in England and Wales. Version 1 is now avilable, but has some limitations. Version 2 is coming autumn 2023.

Visit the app website for general info and screenshots, or the testing project website for more about how you can help.

• How to install testing versions of Badger Watch — and keep them updated

• Introduction — some information about the app and its testing phase
• Q&A — answers for local badger groups, app testers and others
• What to test — and what to look out for
• Feedback — how to let us know what you find
• Issue tracker — see what's been noticed
• Release notes — what's changed in recent updates
• Privacy policy

Badger Watch is a cross-platform app built with Flutter.

This repository is used for issue tracking for now. Source code will be made available here after our version 2 production releases have come out.

badgerapp's Issues

Time of incident

Although the BT online report form doesn't currently ask for time of incident, this is clearly relevant information which we could do with prompting the user to report. Should we add this as an additional form field on the incident report page, or perhaps just as a suggestion in brackets under "Are there any more details you'd like to include?".

Selecting 'today's date' unresponsive

When completing the fields at the bottom of the Incident Form, the date field does not respond to a selection of today's date unless I move any of month, date, year to another value and then back again.

Names not capitalised on Incident Report

• Work through the Sett Interference flow to get to the incident Report
• Enter details

Entering names is not capitalised by default. Cosmetic issue but would look more professional if it did.

Evidence of badger activity at the sett - prompt to describe sett?

In the evidence checklist under "Evidence of badger activity at the sett" - could we change the "Add notes" prompt to encourage the user to describe the sett instead, including listing and describing field signs? If we don't have tick boxes next to the 9 field signs then this might be our best way to encourage the user to intentionally document what they see.

Name of the app

I believe we agreed a while ago that the working title should probably not be the public name of the app, and that the name we choose should probably begin with the word "badger".

• Badger Patrol - already in use with a different meaning
• Badger Watch
• Badger Report
• Badger Guardian - suggested by JP or VM?
• Badger Witness - suggested by JP or VM?

Suggest we decide on this before we move to open beta. Not a problem if invited testers (closed beta) see the app with a working title, but once awareness spreads to people we don't know consistency of branding will be needed.

Note that a persistent identifier of the app is (for obscure technical reasons) org.projectbadger.badger, and must always be if we want to maintain continuity of updates once someone has installed the app. This is visible to users in certain circumstances, although not prominently, and not within the app UI itself.

Uncompressed "stop badger crime" image needed

This image incorporated into welcome screen since v1.2.6 but see my comments:

If we go with this image or one like it in the production release we ought to use an uncompressed PNG image, i.e. go back to whatever you received from the designer of this logo. I’ve used the JPEG from the email for now.

BT to send me this please if we are using this image.

Dark mode

While technically a nice-to-have rather than something we need, it is likely to be fairly straightforward to implement a mode that switches the entire UI theme into dark background colours with white text etc. This is increasingly a feature of well-designed mobile apps and is especially useful for an app that might be used outside after dark.

This has been mentioned a couple of times and I would like to implement it, so I'm opening an issue to keep track although it's some way down the priority list for now. I implemented persistent user preferences early in alpha testing for a few reasons, but partly with this feature in mind, since it's effectively a prerequisite.

Note the location display screen looks different from the rest of the UI and is inherently in dark mode, by design.

Sending reports - email permissions issue

When I first started using the app, I was prompted to give Huawei permission to access my Google account. After I did this I was able to successfully send a test report and it subsequently appeared in my sent folder in my Gmail account.

However, I then removed Huawei's permissions to access my Google account and tried sending a fresh report. It appeared to send this successfully (i.e. the report appeared in an email and I clicked send) but I wasn't sure how it could have sent it given I had removed Huawei's permissions. So I checked my sent folder and this time it did NOT appear in the sent folder, suggesting it did not successfully send.

So if I hadn't checked my sent folder, I wouldn't have had any reason to suspect the email hadn't sent.

App logo

Square crop of BT logo has been used for current alpha releases just so we have something for now.

DV comments:

Suggest we use a badger paw print instead (fits with patrol name too). I can get this designed if you give me any ratio/format requirements.

Part of my reply from the earlier shared document:

For any app logo, aspect ratio needs to be 1:1 square, and we start with a high-res uncompressed PNG at 1024x1024 (some sources say 1536x1536 but that may be overkill) which is then transformed in all sorts of ways with rounded corners etc that are applied differently depending on where the logo appears (different phones, different Android/iOS versions, phone itself vs app store etc). Main advice would be to keep it simple and avoid text (icon will be very small in many settings and the launcher will have the name underneath it anyway), avoid white background, and avoid overall shapes that won’t fit well with the rounded corners and other edge cropping that will be applied. I can generate the versions we need from a single 1024x1024 PNG, but if you’re dealing with a graphic designer they’ll know more than me about how to do this well, and main documents to refer to would be https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/icons-and-images/app-icon/ and https://developer.android.com/distribute/google-play/resources/icon-design-specifications

Input encouraged. Suggest we have this fully in place by the time of open beta. If we have a good idea of where we're going we can fairly easily switch to a placeholder that looks more like it before then.

Latrine photo

I believe a better photo for the latrine info page would be of a more typical dung pit containing earthworm-rich faeces. The photo used does not show a pit.

Evidence of badger activity - selection is not intuitive

• Select Sett interference
• Select Badger diggers
• Select 'No' to 'Is someone interfering with the sett right now?'
• Mark location on map
• Select 'Evidence of badger activity at the sett'

This screen includes a list of potential evidence of badger activity. Seeing that list, my expectation was that clicking on each heading would 'select' that evidence, like a pick list. However, clicking on each gives information but does not select. Instead, I have to type in the list of evidence manually.

More intuitive in my opinion would be the ability to click on a heading to select an evidence type with an Information icon to click on should I need information about the evidence type. The less manual typing and the more easy clicks the better (a) for speed of entry and (b) to make it easier to give complete information given that the user is likely to be in the field in the cold, wet, wind etc.

Suggestion - add County to personal details

Small cosmetic suggestion - would it be feasible to:

• add county to the personal details that uses can enter under Settings;
• for that county to be offered as the default county when entering details of an incident?

Won't be correct 100% of the time but likely to be correct for the majority of entries.

Go-live point for real incident reports

We currently direct reports to an email address set up to receive testing reports. Notices in the UI make clear to users that the app can be used for testing reports and should not be used for real reports.

Once enough testing has been done in closed beta, we will need to switch from this state of affairs to real reports being sent through to CF. This depends on the implementation of many more features yet, verification that the decision tree is advising users accurately and gathering the most useful data from them, and user acceptance testing.

We will want to be open to real reports by the time of open beta since we will then have users we don't know and aren't in touch with using the app.

Issue opened in advance so we can discuss it as the time approaches.

Legislation pop-up not displaying properly

(This may be the case for other scenarios as well although I have not checked specifically)

Under the hunt-related sett interference scenario, s.2 and s.1 of the PBA are not displaying correctly in the pop-up.

Testing scenarios

Needed for our beta testers. JG working on some and will be sharing them with CF.

Typo in 'Dog stuck in a sett'

In the penultimate paragraph, there is a typo 'to' instead of 'do'.

Not connecting to Mail client

I tried to submit a report for the first time and couldn't as message said I needed to restore 'Mail' which was no longer on my iphone. I have gmail set up and outlook, so not sure what the problem is. When I click to go to the App store for it it shows me 'Mail' from Apple - which I don't want. How do we get around this? Chris I'll send you the message, as it's on my phone.

Location added to map not location selected

When trying to add a location to the map, I am indicating with my thumb the selected location on the map. The red icon is positioned in a location southeast of the location indicated and some distance away.

Law pop-ups

A single instance implemented for testing since 1.2.7 and it appears to work well. Will be rolled to other places where legislation is referenced, in a coming alpha release.

Wording of Badger Trust in strings

Request from DV to amend "the Badger Trust" to "Badger Trust".

My request for clarification from 11 Oct:

Currently the only strings that include this are my placeholder intro blurb which is being replaced [...], and on the screen that says “Please still document and report licensed sett interference to the Badger Trust for their records.” Are we saying this should be “report licensed sett interference to Badger Trust”? I can easily make the change; just checking I understand the intention since BT website home page talks about “reporting incidents to the Badger Trust”.

Add "show time, date and location" to Home Screen?

This may be a useful addition if we can fit it in.

Add a word to "information you've provided so far"

Before submitting the report, the user is given a summary incident report which they can edit. When going through the forestry scenario, at the moment under "Information you've provided so far" it says "This is a sett interference incident linked to forestry or tree surgery". Can we add the word 'badger' in front of 'sett'? This may seem pedantic but if this report is forwarded directly to police it would be good to include the word badger at the very start. Obviously this would need to be done for all other scenarios too.

Landscape optimisation

Like tablet optimisation #14 this is low on the priority list, as most use cases we envisage involve the user holding a phone in portrait. To avoid issues with certain screens overflowing, we went to forced portrait view in an early 1.2.x version, but I believe this is not enforceable for iPads in particular. In general, tablet-optimised apps are more amendable to portrait view and are used in this way more often than phone apps.

As with designing for tablets, I'm opening an issue to keep track of this and any comments and input. If there are straightforward steps that can be taken to facilitate use of the app in landscape I'll look at them, but no great efforts will be made at this stage while major features are outstanding.

Map not responsive

When trying to add a location to the map, movement around the map is restricted. It seems to move diagonally but not up/down and right/left.

What3words integration

Intended as an option for the user, but there are obstacles to making easy use of this as W3W is a proprietary system that relies on the goodwill of a commercial third party.

W3W integration will follow implementation of the general mapping feature on which it depends.

Suggestion for 'Home' button after saving draft report

If I choose to save a draft report, the message tells me the draft has been saved in 'My reports'.

It would be nice to have a 'Home' button on this screen to go back to the start/My Reports if I choose not to hit 'Next' to continue. Otherwise I have to go 'back' about 10 screens to get to the Home page.

Report sett locations to local groups and/or BT

Out of scope for minimum viable v1 of the app, so marked wontfix for the foreseeable future.

Opened issue to pre-empt raising of this during testing, and to gather any discussion of it as a likely feature request.

The app will allow users to save locations locally, including sett locations, making it easier for them to note setts in the field and pass the relevant info on themselves.

Evidence checklist for forestry scenario lists irrelevant option

When going through the forestry sett interference scenario, the evidence checklist includes "The animal in situ" - I don't think this should be there

Backend: submission of reports without involving user email clients

Opening this and marking as wontfix for the foreseeable future, to pre-empt and link together any raising of it during testing feedback.

This was an early design decision for the app (before I joined the project) and is far from ideal from a user experience point of view, but has certain advantages that have proved decisive within the constraints of the present development project.

An app like this would typically allow users to submit their reports directly from its user interface, by contacting a server (the 'backend') behind the scenes. Part of the development job would be to arrange the processing, storage and subsequent transmission and use of data received by the backend. The app as it stands avoids all this in favour of generating the text of an email that is then the user's responsibility to send, ending up in the same inbox as those submitted via the existing form on the BT website.

If resources allow in the future, and if the present obstacles can be overcome, implementation of a backend could be the centrepiece of v2.0, but is out of scope for now.

Tablet optimisation

Tracking issue for anything related to how the app works or appears on tablets.

Most use cases for the app are likely to involve a phone, and that's what we're prioritising. It's therefore to be expected that the UI may look odd on a tablet, but in principle there's no reason why all the functionality shouldn't be mirrored, with the likely exception of anything that depends on mobile data for sending an email report from the field.

Comments and input on how the app performs on tablets are welcome here, and problems will be addressed if there are easy fixes that won't hold up progress on more pressing issues.

High-res images throughout

Currently using low-res placeholders throughout.

List of images needing either replacement or high-res version is with JG. Others where only a placeholder is currently available should be evident from earlier screen mock-ups e.g. Figma. Awaiting high-res images and image credits.

"Show time, date and location" only reliably shows in portrait mode

The grid ref, time and date show well in portrait mode but this might not be the most useful for holding up to a camera, particularly in low light conditions. When the screen is turned, it only currently shows the top half of the portrait mode screen, i.e. the grid ref, with no option to scroll up/down to also show time and date. I.e. the screen does not adapt well to landscape mode.

Typo 'Don' on 'Thank you' page

After having emailed an incident report, the Thank You screen has a button labelled 'Don'.

I assume this is a typo and should be 'Done'

?

Emails generated under iOS 14 have <BR>s inserted

Due to a known bug with iOS (see details), emails generated by the app under iOS 14.6 and at least some subsequent 14.x contain inappropriately placed HTML <BR> tags whenever the string we pass has a newline character, which our reports need plenty of for readability.

Opening an issue to keep track if this becomes a big problem. Marking as wontfix for now since it appears to be difficult for developers to mitigate. Fault lies with Apple, who have fixed their own bug in iOS 15. Solution for users is to upgrade to iOS 15, or use a different mail app on their iPhone to the one affected (the stock iOS mail client?). For users who are unable to upgrade, we will have odd-looking emails, but all the data should be there. The problem will be if users are confused by what they are seeing and don't send reports.

Please comment if you see this behaviour. If you see other problems with how our app's email report is rendered in your email app please file a separate bug report.

Welcome/intro screen improvements

Per CF's request of 11 Oct "Welcome Page- fine but can we make this more interesting?"

Awaiting info on what is envisaged here.

Forestry Commission guidance paragraph needs revision

On Sett Interference > Forestry screen, Forestry Commission guidance is outdated according to CF.

Awaiting draft of new paragraph for this.

Typo on 'Cage traps'

• Select 'Traps or snares'
• Select 'Cage trap'

There is a typo in the first paragraph on the 8th line where it reads 'Licenses for cage-trapping are normally only issues for the months...'

Inconsistent text sizes and text clipping

This is taking a while to fully resolve, and occurs on some but not all Android devices, so it would be helpful to know more about which are affected.

Sometimes neighbouring text on the same screen is inconsistent when it's meant to be the same size and style, e.g. bullet points and the paragraphs that surround them, like in this screenshot.

Typo in Shooting or Lamping

• Select 'Shooting or lamping'

The first page includes some paragraphs of text. In the penultimate line in the 3rd paragraph, there is a typo 'conjuction'.

Sett Interference flow

• Select Sett interference
• Select Forestry or tree surgery
• select 'No' to question 'is someone interfering with the sett right now'

The information on the next screen is the same as when I answer 'Yes' to this question and prompts me to talk to workers. I would expect a different response here give I've said the interference is not currently happening.

Text clipping/overflowing on show location screen

Per report from CF, something about this screen doesn't look right on at least one variety of iPhone.

Note this screen intentionally looks very different to others in the app as it is designed to be held up in front of a camera to assist with documenting evidence. However, it should not clip or overflow.

So far unable to reproduce so awaiting further info from CF, specifically:

• please let me know which kind of iPhone you are using (Settings > General > About > Model Name)
• screenshot would be very helpful

Draft saving and navigating outside the workflow

Related to CF's question "Is there a return button to go back to the start?"

These were added in v1.2.5 for screens in the decision tree, but more work is required to have them later in the user's workflow. This is because we need to handle a half-finished report in a sensible way without losing data. Generally we would do this by saving a draft the user can come back to later. Early in the workflow, when we are still in the tree, there isn't a risk of losing data so navigation to home from these screens can be done with the user starting again if they want to come back to their report.

Current intention is to implement draft saving, allowing home navigation with confirmation dialogues later in the workflow.

Snares text flow

• Select 'Traps or snares'
• Select 'Snare'
• Select 'Snare on a badger run or near a sett'

The next option is asking about information about 'the animal in situ' and it asks for photos of dead or injured badgers. These questions do not seem relevant in this flow reporting a snare, not an animal in a snare. This seems to be the same screen as occurs if the user had selected to report 'Dead badger in a snare'.

I've seen similar unexpected questions on the other flows where I've selected the option that indicates there is not a live or dead badger present. Eg. in the following flows:

• Leghold trap or body grip trap
• Cage traps
• Other traps

User warning to activate Location Services for Badger Watcher app

• Select Sett interference
• Select Badger diggers
• Select 'No' to 'Is someone interfering with the sett right now?'
• Mark location on map
• Select 'Evidence of badger activity at the sett'
• Select 'Take photos or videos using Another device'
• Select 'Show time, date and location'.

The screen only shows the time and date, but not the location. In a different app on my phone, the GPS location is correctly found.
_**

"Forestry or tree surgery: Happening now" lists irrelevant information

At the moment it says both "If safe to do so, speak with workers, a site manager or the landowner to find out if a licence was obtained to carry out this work." AND "If safe to do so, speak with the farmer or landowner to find out if a licence was obtained to carry out this work."

The latter needs removing for this scenario.

Signs of current use - tiles vs list

Can we have the 9 badger signs displayed as tiles, rather than as a list?

Map not displaying properly

Trying to pin the location of an incident. The map screen is blank, although it will let me drop a pin (I just can't see where I am dropping it!) and return a grid ref location.

Report RTCs to local groups and/or BT

Out of scope for minimum viable v1 of the app, so marked wontfix for the foreseeable future.

Opened issue to pre-empt raising of this during testing, and to gather any discussion of it as a likely feature request.

The app will allow users to save locations locally, including RTC/RTA locations, potentially making it easier for them to note badgers killed on the roads and pass the relevant info on themselves.

Enable more of the tree

Much of the decision tree was disabled during development of information passing between screens, report building, and related features. This avoided wasting time making changes across the entire tree that are then superseded.

Parts of the tree for which screens exist will become active in coming alpha releases now data passing and report building are working fairly well.

Other parts awaiting information from or discussion with JG.

Home button on map

I am having to click the Home button at the top of the map screen twice in order for it to focus the map of my present location.