Documenting all the feedback from my colleague here, then will split this up into issues as time permits and after some team discussion:
Overall
Feels like a series of disconnected tools
It's confusing having Network and Map on same level as Explore, really, these are child actions. i.e. there should be an Action hierarchy where user first Explores, picks a species and interaction they're interested in, and only then Network/Map become available, pre-populated with the subject species and interaction user picked.
The action hierarchy concept could be implemented by having different versions of the nav bar, in the main/home view, only Explore is available. But after user picks a species, then the Nav changes to show the current species and interaction type, then exposes other actions such as Network
Map is too confusing as a view in and of itself, move it to Network view, perhaps under the graph. Such that every time user clicks on an edge, the map is updated with the observations/studies for that interaction
Explore
Redesign the form so it flows left to right to match the expected user interaction, for example
Select an animal (then render the found animal card directly below the dorpdown), then beside that select interaction, then the grid below
Cards
Not clear that "flip" will turn the card over
Kind of annoying that user must click first to flip card and then can interact with it, would prefer to see all interactions on same view (not useful to have them hidden on the back)
Confusing to have "eats" and "eaten by" clickable on the card, when there is already a dropdown to pick the interaction. Generally confusing that there is more than one way to perform the same action
Instead of 'map' and 'network' links on the card, would be better that clicking on a card from search results makes that the new "subject", and user can start a new search and pick a new interaction type
Network Graph
Position arrows and edges below text so they don't block it (z-index)
Reduce opacity of arrows and edges so they don't obscure the text and nodes
The de-emphasized text needs to be less chunky (stroke/fill combo is making it bold)
Map
Use leaflet fitBounds api to auto zoom/center map around the observations, calc min/max lat/lng and pass to fitBounds api
Documenting all the feedback from my colleague here, then will split this up into issues as time permits and after some team discussion:
Overall
Explore
Cards
Network Graph
Map