Multi-trait data collection features

[BoMeyering]

The Issues

I did another Gridscore training with some colleagues yesterday, and one thing that came up several times was how multi-valued traits are currently entered and saved. Several folks said they will score 3-5 plants for a trait per plot before moving on to the next plot. However, if they enter that data right now, they need to enter the values one at a time, click "save" to exit the plot menu, and then reopen the data collection menu again to enter the rest of the values one by one.

Also, with some of the traits, folks wanted to know if they had collected the proper amount of data points in their multivalued trait. For instance, if they always measure the height of 3 plants in the plot, it would be nice to visually see somehow that they collected 3 data points for that plot. Right now the circle stays half full as long as you have collected at least one data point, and never gets filled in all the way.

Possible Solutions

For the first issue, would it make sense to have a "next" button in the plot data menu to allow folks to quickly enter the next observation for a multi-trait? I'm not sure if the way it's currently implemented is a limitation of the underlying data structure, but I thought I'd bring it up as a possible feature to add.

Secondly, when setting up a trait, could you add an optional field to set the number of expected values for a multi-trait, and once that number of points has been entered, the circle would be completely filled in?

[sebastian-raubach]

Both of those features are currently in development. The easier way of entering multiple entries will come out soon, the trait definition with expected number of entries will follow later.

[sebastian-raubach]

The only question that I still need to figure out is what if you've got a trait that should be collected as a set of 3/5 values per plot, but multiple times throughout the trial, i.e. sets of 3/5 at different dates. On the day the data is collected, the circle should be filled once the 3/5 values have been recorded, but what about the next day? Should they go back to empty or stay full until at least one value has been recorded on a following day? Need to think about this.

I think I've solved how to store the data, it's just about how to visually represent it in the display.

[BoMeyering]

Good deal, yeah, I was talking about this very thing with some of the folks I was training. The other thing to think about is how it would aggregate the data. Say if you collect 3 points per day over a period of 10 days, under the current setup, you could only either export the aggregated value for all data points over all dates, or it would just export the last value recorded for each day (if you choose not to aggregate). Neither of those seem to be the option a user might want, right?

I've been training my colleagues to export data out of Gridscore as soon as they collect it, at which point they could reset the trial, for the next data point, mitigating the issue. But as we've discussed before, having trials distributed over multiple devices and on the server makes resetting a trial challenging...