Feature: GPX to show other issues in my area

[tordans]

I have this campaign to check and fix all missused village_greens in Berlin – eg. https://maproulette.org/challenge/26808/task/127865352.

My non-ideal situation: I edit one task in iD, save in iD, mark as complete in MapRoulette and go to the next task in proximity. Only to find it right around the corner.

The issue: This leads to a lot of non-needed clicks and small changesets that I would like to avoid.

Idea for a solution: iD can receive a GPX param via URL which is an URL with a KML file. This is used by the TaskingManager to mark the area of edit, for example.

MapRoulette could use this, to create a KML on the fly that holds all other task in about 1 km area around my place. The KML output would show in pink. Like this area here (image) (source).

I could then zoom out in iD and edit the data in my area as well, save only once and mark them as "already mapped" in MapRoulette.

[tordans]

Another feature that would make it easier to map multiple issues at once would be to show nearby issues on the task-map eg https://maproulette.org/challenge/26808/task/127865352. Right now it only shows the current issue.

[tordans]

Update: I just discovered the "work on multiple tasks together" widget. That kind of solves my problem.

From a UX point of view, I think there are still a few thinks that could be improved. Suggestions:

• Show other task on the regular map by default; I don't see why that would be an issue. The current one could be highlighted.
• Increase the discoverability of this multi-task-widget by adding a teaser/info on the map widget that opens this special widget.
• Show highlight the other areas in iD via GPX so I can find them more easily.

[mvexel]

Glad you found the 'work on multiple tasks' function :)

The idea to show other tasks close by (perhaps in grey or some other different visualization that makes it clear what the current task is and what other nearby tasks are.

We would need to think about how to 'nudge' or alert users that they could also work on these nearby tasks in the same editing session.

Perhaps another way of highlighting this would be to say: "There are X more tasks nearby. Include them? Yes"

[mvexel]

Thinking about this some more. How about we give mappers an obvious way to switch between single and multi task work? This would basically toggle between the single-task and the multi-task map widgets. That way, the user would not need to "discover" the multi-task widget by going into the layout editing mode.

One way to implement this could be to have a preset layout for single task work and one for multi task work, which would be the same except for the map widget that is displayed.

In addition, we would need to make the layout switcher a bit more obvious to discover. Right now it's just a small cog icon, that hides a lot of powerful functionality: