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PlantShoe: Botanical Detectives

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HCI Outdoors: Theory, Design, Methods and Applications

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the design and deployment of a citizen science application to inventory iconic medicinal non-timber forest products in the wild, such as black cohosh, ramps, and Bloodroot. The application is called PlantShoe (a pun on ‘Gumshoe’) and is used on mobile devices to collect data in the field about forest medicinal plants and their growing conditions. The users’ data is fed into a database, which they can manage, study, and share. Plantshoe data is a part of a larger regional community and consortium which is collecting information about the ecology and distribution of medicinal forest plants. Such analyses can help forest farmers and wild stewards in their processes of site selection and management of these valuable botanicals. We describe our usability engineering in the development of the PlantShoe application and enumerate key design tradeoffs we encountered. Thus, the design decisions and results of PlantShoe provide rich material for the design of future technology on the trail.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for PlanShoe was provided in part by eXtension Foundation and USDA NIFA. Thanks to Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing and the Center for Geospatial Information Technology for their continued support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Research Computing, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Nicholas Polys

  2. Center for Geospatial Information Technology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Peter Sforza

  3. Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    John Munsell

Authors
  1. Nicholas Polys
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  2. Peter Sforza
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  3. John Munsell
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicholas Polys .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Center for Human-Computer Interaction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    D. Scott McCrickard

  2. Department of Computer Science, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

    Michael Jones

  3. Department of Computer Science and Center for Human-Computer Interaction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Timothy L. Stelter

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Polys, N., Sforza, P., Munsell, J. (2020). PlantShoe: Botanical Detectives. In: McCrickard, D.S., Jones, M., Stelter, T.L. (eds) HCI Outdoors: Theory, Design, Methods and Applications. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45289-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45289-6_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45288-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45289-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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