[birding] need birders' feedback on design of bird sound labeling website

[Jed Irvine]

Hi All,

A couple of months ago, I and a colleague gave a presentation at the
Corvallis Audubon Society meeting about a website we were developing
to support a bioacoustics research project at OSU, and to enlist the
help of birders to try out the site.  Now that the site is ready for
user testing, I'm broadcasting the invitation to extend it to those
who were not present at the meeting, and to let you know of a feature
that might be particularly useful to list members.   Testing will take
ten or fifteen minutes of your time.  Currently, the site's url is:

http://bird.selfip.org

The focus of the site is to provide a way for birders to label short
audio samples of bird sounds as being a particular species.  The audio
was collected last summer at a number of stations in the HJ Andrews
Research Forest.  The labels given will be used to train a software
system to be able to automatically identify bird sounds, the ultimate
goal being the capability of more refined and sustained species
distribution tracking.  We envision this as being fun - think of it as
birding by ear online.

The site also supports uploading image and audio files for labeling
and discussion.  We created a prototype "comment tree" to carry
threaded discussions.  The intention isn't to replicate flickr as a
repository for all photos, but rather to be a place to post bird
photos or short audio recordings that are notable or worthy of
discussion in some way (for example, a photo of a hard-to identify or
unusual bird).  It would be great to get feedback on this feature as
well.

We hope that over time the site will become an educational resource
for the birding community - a place where bits of birding expertise
from the community will accumulate and be easier to find than if they
just live in email threads.  Note that when the site goes live, it
will not have any data carried forward from the test period, so don't
consider the site as a permanent repository just yet.

Your input at this stage can help shape the site and would be greatly
appreciated.  Once you create an account, a page appears that gives
guidance on what to test.  Also, feel free to suggest other features
you'd like to see.

As an additional incentive, after you've filled out the feedback form
on the website, email me with the username you chose and I'll add your
name into a hat. We'll pick two names at random on Thursday, May 27th
and treat those folks to lunch at Cafe Yumm (or another Monroe Avenue
restaurant of your choice).

Thanks,

Jed Irvine
Faculty Research Assistant
School of EECS
Oregon State University
irvine at eecs.oregonstate.edu
    or
jedirv at gmail.com