Summary Report

Phase 1:

1. Speed up atlas creation process and improve user feedback:

• Create visibility into feedback around atlas creation processing by revealing the number of atlases being created. We did an initial graph which became the pie charts you can see on the Metrics page. That gave us timing by size and date. We know our improvements worked because the weekly average atlas creation times showed more than a 10x reduction (from over an hour to just under 5 minutes). We were also happy to hear anecdotal evidence via Andrew. The number of atlases created per week has also increased, from about 190 in 2013 prior to this project to almost 300 (286.875) since.
• Show the placement of new atlases in the queue. This turned out not to be necessary thanks to the improvements we made to the atlas creation process. The queue became short enough that representing wasn't informative or interesting.
• Use the existing load bar to reflect the amount of time that is left for the atlas that’s being created and display load time numerically. We haven't changed the way the bar operates particularly, but now that it indicates actual progress (more quickly, thanks to the above improvements), we decided its original design stood up.
• Delve into the code to discover what technical errors may be causing slowness, as well as other opportunities to improve the speed of atlas creation. Stamen will fix any errors it can within the constraints of time and budget and document the error findings on GitHub at github.com/stamen/fieldpapers. We made a ton of general improvements to the atlas creation process, as well as integrating a robust, 3rd party queue management system called Celery - http://www.celeryproject.org/ - which is working very well. General improvements include: killing failed processes (instead of letting them choke up the queue), replaced the polling engine, rewrote the way anonymous accounts worked because the old version created users in the system that simply weren't needed (and clogged up the works).

2. Make already created atlases easier to find and reuse:

• Create a map of all available public atlases that have been created that will update automatically when new maps are saved. We designed and built a brand new map view for any list of atlases, including most recently created, atlases in a place, by a person, or even by month.
• Enable pagination for the Watch page. Enabled. E.g. Older/Newer: http://fieldpapers.org/atlases.php
• Enable atlas “borrowing,” allowing users to duplicate an atlas into a new account or anonymous user session. Enabled. E.g. This atlas: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=rbwf46g7#14/40.5347/72.7980 is a copy of this atlas: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=rwhf4799#14/40.5347/72.7980. (You can track copies in the Activity section.)
• “Find other atlases near here” when viewing an atlas. Enabled. E.g. the "Nearby" section on this page: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=6cm5x2tw#13/7.7205/81.6956

3. Enable easier transition between Field Papers and external editors like Potlatch or JOSM, including explanatory text and a help section to support the integration process. Enabled. We added simple links from an Atlas page, under the "Edit In..." heading at the bottom right: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=4qnmmzqr#11/-34.8692/-58.0304.

4. Enable creation of private atlases. _Enabled. We can't show you an example, otherwise we'd have to kill you. Just kidding. Once created, they're only accessible via URL, or by the logged-in owner's Atlases page. Here's an example: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=xpq7q5b2 _

5. Improve backend monitoring and system health:

• Enable backend instrumentation to monitor server health. Enabled.
• Show counts for number of users and active users. We agreed with you that this was difficult, particularly to define the attributes of an "active" user. Instead, we made the page which shows Metrics of overall use, which is linked to in the footer, and you can see here: http://fieldpapers.org/metrics.php.
• Improve automated session management through increased resiliency in response to large numbers of visitors to http://fieldpapers.org, via restricting automatic session creation to those where we can reasonably guess that there is a human (and not a robot) initiating it. Improved.

6. Additional improvements:

• Fix or work around character encoding defects (i.e. when simple text appears as æ¨ªæµœé§…å‰ or similar gibberish). Fixed, for new atlases. Unfortunately, old atlases retain their garbled characters.
• Complete and enable grid overlays. Enabled, for UTM grids. We also added an explanatory note to this effect in the atlas creation process.
• Enable atlas refresh (update this atlas) map tile content functionality, remaking an atlas with the same ID but with new map image tiles. Enabled, for OSM basemap maps. Look for the "Refresh" button on this example: http://fieldpapers.org/atlas.php?id=x8fg823f#14/7.7496/81.6946

Phase 2:

7. Stamen will answer questions and advise the KDMD project on the refinement and/or creation of guidance and how-to documentation for Field Papers. We've extended the contract to mid-July to accommodate the completion of the OSM Field Papers page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Field_Papers

8. Stamen will provide the QED Group, LLC with access to agreed-upon data from Google Analytics and the Field Papers Github website for monitoring and assessment purposes. In addition, Stamen will provide available data on atlas upload and processing times before and after upgrades are made.