Too many clicks to take photo

[SK53]

My workflow during the NYPH was to record the plant, and then only sometimes did I decide to take a photo: convenience, light etc. The steps were:

1. Click on Record
2. Click on Camera Icon in Record details
3. Choose take a photo from pop-up menu
4. Take the photo
5. Click the tick for the photo
6. Sometimes I needed to click again
7. Return from detailed record to record listing

Basically a more natural workflow would be:

Click on the image area in the record listing to access camera Take the photo & immediately return to main record listing

I have no idea if this is possible given the vagaries of the various frameworks in use.

The reasons for advocating this reduced set of steps are:

• I lost photos because I had not noticed that a key press had not been accepted & I had moved on to next record. This was always due to missing one or both ticks for photos.
• Reviewing photos in the field is more tedious than taking them again. One can review photos before upload when sitting in the warm. I believe photos can be saved immediately whilst recording whatever their quality.
• The number of key clicks require made taking photos too tedious when I was seeing lots of plants. I was more likely to use my compact digital camera as this was faster.

One problem may be the standard behaviour of opening the detailed record for individual items in the record list. Ideally I would like to be able to click on this list to ADD ANOTHER record for the same species (something mentioned by other users during the Leicester NYPH) AND add photos to a record with the minimum number of clicks. It occurs to me in this context that one might want a "field mode" and a "review mode": one to maximise recording based on the record list with as few clicks as possible, the other closer to the current implementation with the detailed record at the heart of the UX.

[japonicus]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much the photo taking path can be optimised. There are too many clicks involved, but after initiating the request for a photo many of the subsequent steps are part of standard android behaviour and outside of my control. (gallery v's camera; then a series of clicks to take and confirm the photo) If it is possible to streamline image capture then that would be very worth implementing - will investigate further.

Returning directly from photo to main listing would be possible.

I plan to review many of the app flows to minimise the number of user-actions required to do common things - am sure there is scope for greater efficiency.

For the plant hunt, adding another record of the same species wasn't something I'd considered, as the NYPH rules count distinct species rather than number of records. For a general purpose recording app, a streamlined way to do repeat records of the same species would be useful.

[SK53]

@japonicus Assumed that may be the case (standard android behaviour). Will ask around.

[japonicus]

https://github.com/an-rahulpandey/cordova-plugin-camerapicturebackground

might be interesting (haven't look at it in detail yet, posting link here for reference)