Remove annotation function design change - next gen?

Feature Requests
,
1

What Wildbook should this feature be in? ACW / all?

What would you like to see? “Remove annotation” only removes the annotation from the media asset and leaves the media asset still in place in the encounter record (just like it appears before detection is run on an upload) so that a new annotation can be added.

In this reply to me on the topic of how “Remove annotation” works (Remove Annotation - removes image PLUS annotation - #2 by jason), @jason explained to me that it was working as designed. The problem is that the functionality as currently designed causes more steps and much frustration than the process we used before this functionality was introduced, specifically where another annotation exists on the same media asset as the one with the annotation that is removed.

The old way

  1. Open encounter record - image in gallery has more than 1 animal and more than 1 annotation, and at least one annotation that needs to be removed/fixed
  2. Click on the ‘hamburger’ & select ‘Add annotation’
  3. Add new annotation - after “save”, click on new encounter link for verification
  4. Go back to original encounter (from step 1) tab and delete that encounter

Current way, using “Remove annotation” - option 1

  1. Open encounter record - image in gallery has more than 1 animal and more than 1 annotation, and at least one annotation that needs to be removed/fixed
  2. Click on the ‘hamburger’ & select ‘Remove annotation’ - encounter record no longer has the media asset linked and so gallery is blank
  3. (According to JH’s reply to the original bug report) Click on the Occ ID in the encounter record (to find the other encounter record that had the same base media asset). If I’m lucky, there are less than 20 or so encounters in the Sighting. If unlucky, then I’m opening a lot of encounter records (could be 40, or 100+) to try to find the one with the same base media asset as the one from the encounter record whose annotation I just deleted
  4. From memory, recall the original base media asset and match it to one of the encounters in the sighting or simply open all of the encounters in that sighting and check for any missing or incorrect annotations and then
  5. Click on the ‘hamburger’ & select ‘Add annotation’
  6. Add new annotation - after “save”, click on new encounter link for verification
  7. Go back to the original encounter (from step 1)
  8. Delete this encounter

New way, using “Remove annotation” - option 2

  1. Open encounter record - image in gallery has more than 1 animal and more than 1 annotation, and at least one annotation that needs to be removed/fixed
  2. Click on the ‘hamburger’ & select ‘Add annotation’
  3. Add new annotation - after “save”, click on new encounter link for verification
  4. Go back to the original encounter (from step 1) and select “remove annotation” - encounter record no longer has the media asset linked and so gallery is blank. Since the corrected annotation already exists, I don’t need this encounter so
  5. Delete this encounter
    Clearly in this scenario, “remove annotation” is unnecessary since the encounter gets deleted regardless.

How would this functionality help you?
It would save us the extra steps (and related extra time) in both the current and the old process for removing an annotation.
I understand that the system design connects media assets to encounters via the annotation and so that’s why the media asset disappears when the annotation is deleted. But I have seen encounter records with no annotations on them - they appear this way post bulk upload and prior to detection being run. I’d like to think that there could be a way of replicating that state when removing annotations - something along the lines of “undo detection”?

I know it’s not that simple but the current design of the functionality renders the “remove annotation” function useless to ACW users and we haven’t found another scenario where we would find it useful. It’s faster just to continue to do it the old way and so that’s what’s being done.

I hope that makes sense.

thanks
Maureen

2

I am looking over this and need to confirm if this is a request for a change in functionality or, equally likely, I was not clear in design requirements. This seems like a bug, more than a feature request. Lemme get it sorted and I’ll follow up by next week about how we’re gonna handle it.

Tanya

3

Okay, I have answers! And sooner than expected (although poor Jason had a slog of a time getting me to understand).

We have a couple of different things that people should be able to do easily, and what you’re asking for and what is in the product are two different tools.

Here’s the use cases we know of (please comment with more if you know of them!):

  • remove mediaAsset - wrong picture, get rid of everything
  • reset mediaAsset - go back to just the image and the trivial annotation, no detection annotations
  • remove annotation - this annotation is wrong, but other annotations in the encounter are legit
  • redraw annotation - I need an annotation that is close to this, but better
  • edit annotation - the annotation is correct but the metadata (viewpoint for example) is wrong
  • remove encounter - this is not a valid encounter

We have accurately supported “remove annotation”. This is an important tool if someone has several pictures of a single encounter (very common in whales) and one annotation is wrong (that’s a buoy, not a whale" kind of thing).
We have not supported “redraw annotation”, which is what you’re looking.

This is something that will wait until nextgen, unfortunately. We want to make sure the full toolkit is available and understandable, though, so please comment with anything about language improvements, UX ideas, etc.

Tanya