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/ Chris

Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 65): EarthCache program with GSA’s Matt Dawson

(link to podcast)

0:00:00.0 Chris Ronan: Hey everybody, this is Inside Geocaching HQ. I am Chris Ronan, aka Rock Chalk, one of the 90 or so lackeys who works at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. And this is the podcast where we chat about things that are happening inside HQ, and today I am very happy to share a conversation with Matt Dawson. Matt works at the Geological Society of America. And has been intimately involved with the EarthCache program for many years. You may know that EarthCache is a program of the GSA in partnership with us at geocaching.com and other partners around the world. We get a lot of feedback from geocachers about EarthCaches. It is certainly a beloved cache type, but we do hear often that some EarthCaches can become pretty complicated with a long list of logging tasks, and so in recent months, we have been crunching some numbers about EarthCaches to see if the data backs up some of that feedback that we have been hearing. We shared some of our findings in a new post on the Geocaching blog. I won’t rehash all of it here, but we did find that EarthCache descriptions are a lot longer than they used to be, and EarthCache finds have decreased steadily as a percentage of total geocache finds back in 2011, for instance, EarthCache is made up about 14% of all geocaching finds.

0:01:47.1 CR: Today, it’s 6%, numbers like that concerned HQ and the GSA enough that we are making suggestions to EarthCache creators including that they try not to exceed three logging tasks and a photo that they list logging tasks at the top of the cache description, and that they just try to generally keep in mind that EarthCaches are meant to assume that finders have only a basic knowledge of geology, and as Matt Dawson says during the conversation that you’re about to hear, that less is sometimes more. So without any further ado, here is my chat with Matt Dawson from the GSA.

0:02:36.6 CR: Okay, well, Matt, let’s start with what is the GSA for people that are listening that might not be super familiar with it, and especially if you live in another part of the world outside of the United States. What is the Geological Society of America all about?

0:02:52.4 Matt Dawson: Yeah, well, first of all, thanks a lot, Chris, and the folks at geocaching.com for inviting me here for this discussion today, I’m really glad to be able to chat about the EarthCache program with you. And I’ll just quickly introduce myself and say a little bit about my organization, GSA, and my name is Matt Dawson, and I work at the Geological Society of America. The Geological Society of America is a membership-based organization with thousands of members all around the United States and around the world, we provide support for the community of geoscientists and help support their research through scientific publications and conferences. And we also support the professional growth of geoscientists at all levels of their career, from college student, all the way up through seasoned veteran geoscientist. And we also provide support for a lot of students through research funding, internship and work experiences, fellowships, grants, scholarships, and other various forms of support. And of course, we are also involved in public outreach to an extent, and the EarthCache partnership is one of the center pieces of our public outreach.

0:04:10.6 CR: It’s based in Boulder, Colorado, correct?

0:04:13.5 MD: That’s right, yeah, yeah. Although we are a global society, we are based in Boulder, Colorado, and that’s where I’m situated and we have staff in various places around the country. And we also have a Washington DC office as well.

0:04:29.9 CR: Yeah, and my niece and I got to visit with you last year, and that was fantastic to get to visit the building. You have some really fun examples of geology around your building and various specimens and stuff like that and it was super cool to be able to do that, and then we went out and found EarthCache together, which was really neat too.

0:04:51.5 MD: Yeah, some of the early EarthCaches were developed around GSA headquarters by various GSA staff members. And in a town like Boulder, you know there’s gonna be really great… A town with a name like Boulder, you know, there’s gonna be a really great geology in the area, so we are really proud to be the hosts of a number of really nice EarthCache locations.

0:05:13.3 CR: You’ve been at the GSA for as long as I’ve been at Geocaching HQ, and I think probably a lot longer, so how long have you been there and… Yeah. Just kind of what’s your day-to-day like there?

0:05:24.4 MD: Yeah, I’ve been at the Geological Society of America since 2010, and currently I work as the assistant director for our Center for Professional Excellence. Our Center for Professional Excellence is a relatively new initiative that supports the growth and the excellence of geoscientists throughout all stages of their career, from when they are an undergraduate student, all the way up through a senior geologist or even retirees. And some of the programs that I deal with most directly are things like, for example, our graduate student research grant program, which provides funding for Masters and PhD level students to carry out research within all different areas of the geosciences. Some other programs I’m directly involved with are the Scientists in Parks Program, which is an internship based program in partnership with the National Park Service, who is also one of the original partners for the EarthCache program. That program provides internship opportunities for students and recent graduates in all facets of the scientists on all facets of the sciences, including geoscience, and then we also have a GeoCorps America program that’s a partnership with other public land agencies like the US Forest Service and the US Bureau of Land Management, and that provides paid work experiences for students and recent graduates, specifically in the geosciences.

0:06:50.7 MD: Areas of soil resources, hydrology and water resources, conservation of national forests and the geological resources that exist within them, so those are some of the key programs that I work with, there are some others as well. And of course, the EarthCache program.

0:07:08.7 CR: Yeah, so you’ve been there for more than half of the EarthCache programs live, so let’s talk about the EarthCache program. And before we… Well, I guess at the beginning of this, we should make sure to mention that a number of people have worked on this program over the years, but Gary Lewis is somebody in particular that we should mention because Gary is kind of… I guess you’d say the father maybe of the EarthCache program, right?

0:07:32.4 MD: Definitely. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I think most people would consider Gary Lewis the father of the EarthCache program. Gary, who’s caching name was Geo aware. He was the original Geo aware. There are many of us now, but Gary created the first EarthCache in 2004 in Australia, and that’s EarthCache one and it was a geologic exploration of a location called Wasp Head on the Australian coast exploring some really neat erosional features and looking at the geological history of the rocks in that area, and their EarthCache Program started really with that first EarthCache placement in Australia. But it was born out of discussions at a GSA annual meeting, one of our conferences that brings together geoscientists from around the world, but there’s a conversation about how to get the public more engaged in earth science and the possibility of doing that through connections with the geocaching community, and from there the idea of EarthCaching was born.

0:08:41.6 CR: And I know I still see Gary’s name occasionally on Facebook that he leads EarthCaching tours and stuff like that, so he’s still very involved in that, even though he’s not at the GSA anymore. So why is the EarthCache program important to the GSA? Why do you feel like the program is valuable to the organization?

0:09:00.6 MD: I think the EarthCache program, like I said earlier, GSA considers it one of its key ways of generating outreach about the earth sciences to the general public. The EarthCache program has brought tens of thousands… It’s actually, I suppose millions now, people have had earth science education experiences through this program. It also helps people have an experience of what it’s like to be a geoscientist in a very small way through the logging tasks, and this is something I’m sure we’ll get to later in this conversation. But the logging tasks really are an important part of EarthCaches for GSA, because that’s what encourages people to think scientifically about their surroundings, going a little bit deeper beyond the just wow factor or the scenic nature or the natural beauty around them, but by engaging with and providing answers to the logging tasks, people really start to think a little bit like an earth scientist would. So that’s something that’s really important to GSA. Another reason it’s important to GSA is because if its global and international nature, there are EarthCaches all around the earth, so it’s not just something that’s limited to the area around Boulder, Colorado or the United States, earth caching is popular in many countries around the world.

0:10:25.1 MD: There have been EarthCaches events globally, like official international EarthCache events and other events that have focused on earth caching that shows that it really is a global and international phenomenon, because of course, there’s earth science everywhere, right? That’s, again, one of those things that’s illustrated through the EarthCache program. The EarthCache is at really well-known and special locations like the Grand Canyon in the United States, for example, where some of the popular tourist destinations in Iceland. But there are some folks who can find EarthCaches in their neighborhoods as well, so again, it just goes to show people that earth science really is everywhere, and it’s a part of our everyday lives.

0:11:09.3 CR: Yeah, and that’s something that I know when you and I went out and found an EarthCache there in Boulder that we were discussing, what it is that ideal you hope a geocacher gets out of their EarthCaching experience. And that the one that we found was actually I think it may have been one that Gary placed many, many, many years ago, and it was very, very simple.

0:11:33.0 MD: That’s right. That’s right.

0:11:34.8 CR: And as I recall, there was maybe even only one logging tasks, and you had said something that stuck with me, I think you said you could see that this could be maybe fleshed out a little bit more, but this is a great EarthCache because it was just so simple, you saw something, you learned a little something about it, and you walked away knowing a little bit more, and really that’s what you would like to see if somebody get out of an EarthCache.

0:12:03.0 MD: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I am a big believer that in many cases, less is more, and thinking back to that EarthCache that we visited, it had a very, very tight and focused lesson on the types of rocks visible right at that location, wasn’t trying to teach the entire geological history of the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, it was just very well-focused and you left knowing a little bit more than you did that morning. And again, it also just got you thinking like an earth scientist and realizing that our science is all around you. And also, I think a good EarthCache inspires people to want to learn more about an area, and they don’t need to do all that learning through the EarthCache itself, they could do that learning by visiting local parks or museums or learning centers or looking online at some other resources like their local their state geological survey, for example, most states in the United States have a geological survey or an organization like it that can provide really good information about one’s local geology. And there are organizations like that around the world too, but yeah, I’m a big believer that less is more and keeping things simple can deliver a better lesson and a better experience.

0:13:24.3 CR: Yeah, and that’s kind of what prompted in our conversation here today. Well, one thing being that it’s recently the 20th anniversary of EarthCaching, and so I thought that would be a good reason for us to talk, but also that HQ is gonna be publishing this blog post where we make some suggestions for people specifically for EarthCache owners as they’re constructing EarthCaches, after we had not just looked at some statistics about EarthCaches, but also that we in HQ, and I’m guessing you also get feedback about EarthCaches over time, and some people say to us that, I feel like I had to write a dissertation in order to get a founded on this EarthCache. And it’s tricky, isn’t it? To find that balance between, you wanna create something that people can learn from, but you also don’t want it to be so overwhelming that people don’t even bother trying to read it and learn from it.

0:14:19.2 MD: That’s exactly right. A geology dissertation is for graduate school, and we have lots of members who are graduate students working on dissertations right now, and EarthCaches are not meant to replicate that experience, they are really intended to get people interested in and excited about geology, especially the geology around them, the geology where they’re vacationing or the geology where they live. I like this new initiative that we’re working on now, and that you’ll be describing more in this upcoming blog post, because I think it brings the EarthCache program back to its roots in a way where it really is about raising awareness of the earth sciences and getting people excited about being outside, which I think is very well aligned with the goals of geocaching in general.

0:15:06.1 CR: When you visit an EarthCache or even when you and I went out and he found one, what makes a good EarthCache in your mind?

0:15:15.9 MD: Yeah, it’s a really great question. And some of the things that I look for in an EarthCache are what is the cache owner trying to help me to learn? What is the lesson they’re trying to get across? Personally, I prefer EarthCaches that are not attempting to address the entire geological history of an area, but instead have a really good focus, and maybe it’s teaching about a specific type of fossil that you can see in a road cut there before you, or it might be discussing a certain type of mineral that occurs within the igneous rocks in the outcrops of an area that you’re visiting. I really like to see a very well thought out and focused lesson that’s not really all over the place, and it’s just really clear what is being taught and there could be other things that you might teach there, but they don’t all need to be crammed into the EarthCache. I think sometimes somebody might be better off creating multiple EarthCaches, maybe there are two or three different things you can see at a location, but maybe focus on one here, and then perhaps a few miles away, there’s even a better example of this other feature that you want to teach people about, and you can create a different EarthCache that focuses solely on that without trying to cram multiple topics into one location.

0:16:41.5 MD: I think this would make for a better EarthCaching experience. I also look for EarthCaches that are unique and are highlighting something a little bit different that you don’t hear about all the time, and EarthCaches that highlight a feature that you can’t really see in a lot of other places. So uniqueness is really important to me as an EarthCacher and also a clear and focused lesson. Those are a couple of things I look for personally when visiting an EarthCache, and although I don’t really review EarthCaches on a regular basis anymore, except occasionally where I’m called upon to provide a little extra assistance here and there, but when I was a more frequent reviewer, those are the things I looked for as a reviewer as well.

0:17:29.3 CR: For somebody out there who has never created an EarthCache before, and I’d even put myself in that category because it feels a little overwhelming sometimes that… ’cause I’m not a geologist, and most of my interest in earth or my experience with earth science or geology comes from my experience with EarthCaches. So for somebody like me who might think I’m not qualified to put out an EarthCache, are there any tips or any guidance that you would give to somebody who might have some interest in creating an EarthCache, but isn’t really sure exactly where to start, even if they have maybe identified something that they think could be a place for a lesson?

0:18:14.6 MD: So for somebody who’s just getting started out with creating an EarthCache. I think one of my biggest pieces of advice would be to really trust your reviewer, and I think I’ll use this as an opportunity to acknowledge and thank the team of International EarthCache reviewers or the Geo awares who make the EarthCache program possible. I see them as a really fantastic resource to the community, they really like publishing EarthCaches and working with cache owners to help them to create the best EarthCache listing that they can. So that’s one piece of advice I would offer is to definitely rely on their expertise of the area, because they’ve likely published… I don’t even wanna put a number on it, but many, many EarthCaches, and they’re gonna have good familiarity of the area and can help guide you in the right direction if help is needed with your listing, because it’s very rare that a listing gets published immediately once it’s submitted. There’s usually a rough process of revising, editing and making sure everything meets the guidelines. So that’s one piece of advice I would give. Another one would be, I guess to go back to my statement earlier about less being more, and don’t try to include everything about the area’s geological history in your EarthCache listing.

0:19:38.8 MD: Don’t approach it as like, I wanna make an EarthCache, but where should I do it? It should almost be the other way around, like you come across the location in your travels or in some reading and you get inspired and you realize, Wow, this place would work, this would be a great place to create an EarthCache, and if you encounter a location like that and get inspired I think that makes things a lot easier because already you… If you’re inspired by it, other people are likely to be inspired by it as well, and it’s really just a matter of you serving as their guide and helping them have that same experience that you had, and just picking a simple, straightforward lesson, decide what it is you want somebody to learn when they visit your EarthCache location.

0:20:28.6 MD: And do your research, you don’t need to become an expert in the area’s geology, you don’t need to write a dissertation or to have done extensive research, but get yourself well-versed and use the resources that are available. There are a lot of great resources out there about earth science. Earlier I mentioned organizations that are commonly called geological surveys, here in the United States, we have the US Geological Survey that serves the country as a whole, but most, if not all states have a geological survey or an organization like it that publish geological maps and reports and other sorts of resources about an area’s geology. Sometimes it can get a little bit technical, but there are often resources that are really designed for wide consumption by the greater public. And here in the United States, there’s a publisher called Mountain Press and other publishers, better kind of like them, that put out really good books with maps and background information about about the geology of in different states and regions. And again, there are the equivalent of these sorts of resources in other countries around the world.

0:21:45.6 MD: So identify what those resources are. Local universities can also be a great resource, many, many universities have geology departments or earth science and environmental science departments, and they may have some information online or have public presentations periodically about various topics within the earth sciences. So get yourself educated. But again, don’t feel like you need to have a master’s degree or a PhD in the area’s geology before creating an EarthCache. The program really is designed for the general public, and somebody who is relatively new to earth science, I think is well suited to making an EarthCache because they’re kind of exploring and learning alongside of the folks that are coming and visiting the location too. So don’t be intimidated.

0:22:34.4 CR: Well, you’ve inspired me, and those are some great tips. So kind of as we wrap up here, I think we can talk about this program forever, but in respect of your time, again, looking back 20 years at this program… And I know you weren’t there for the very beginning, but you’ve been there for most of it, it must be… I don’t know, there must be a lot of pride that comes for the GSA, and as you mentioned, the so many reviewers that have… The volunteers that have helped over the course of the years that when I look at that map and I see all those dots all over the world that each one of them representing a really interesting lesson about geology and earth science, it must be a really great feeling for you and everyone else at the GSA.

0:23:23.5 MD: You nailed it, it’s an awesome feeling, and I’m always blown away when I see how many EarthCaches there are, and where they are and how they really are anywhere. And I wanna give a big thanks to you and the other folks at geocaching.com for being so supportive of this partnership over the years and for helping to make EarthCache program what it is today. It’s also been amazing to see how far geocaching has come and the progress it’s made over the years. And again, there are geocachers and EarthCachers everywhere. GSA holds professional conferences in the spring, regional conferences and a large national, really international annual conference every fall, and before traveling to those events, I always go online and look up what EarthCachers are in the area, and then we publicize those to our members who are attending the conference and without fail, wherever our events are taking place, there are some really great and interesting EarthCaches in those areas, whether it’s Anaheim California, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Vancouver, Canada a few years ago, and just great EarthCaches everywhere. I’m always impressed by what people in the community are coming up with.

0:24:36.3 CR: Well, here’s to another 20 years and yeah, and it’s always great talking to you about EarthCaches and really appreciate your time with us and we’ll look forward to seeing where the program goes from here.

0:24:50.5 MD: Well, thanks a lot, Chris, and again, thanks for inviting me to join you in this conversation today, and thanks again for all the support that you and your colleagues at geocaching.com have given to this great source of earth science outreach over the years. Thank you.

0:25:08.1 CR: That was Matt Dawson from the Geological Society of America. You can read more about the EarthCache program on the GSA’s website, and we’ve got that new blog post out this week on the Geocaching blog about the EarthCache Program, and those suggestions that we are making to EarthCache creators. Remember, if you’ve got an idea for our podcast or any feedback about it, we are all ears via email at podcast@geocaching.com. That is podcast@geocaching.com. Thanks again to Matt Dawson for chatting with me and on behalf of myself and all the other lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.

Ep 64: New logging flow on Geocaching.com

HQ recently released a new geocache and trackable logging experience on Geocaching.com. Jessica and Ari from HQ’s Product team are here to talk about what’s new and improved!

You can listen to the episode via this page, or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. If you use an aggregator to subscribe to podcasts, you can access the RSS feed here.

A full transcript is available here.

InsideGeocachingHQ_Podcast
Inside Geocaching HQ Podcast
Ep 64: New logging flow on Geocaching.com
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/ Chris

Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 64): New logging flow on Geocaching.com

(link to podcast)

[music]

0:00:12.3 Chris Ronan: Hello there and welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ where we talk about what is happening at HQ in Seattle. I’m Chris Ronan or Rock Chalk on my Geocaching account. Thank you for having a listen to our podcast. If you have logged a geocache or a trackable on geocaching.com in recent days, then you have experienced the new logging flow that we released in early November. Today I catch up with Jessica and Ari from HQ’s product team to cover some of what’s new in that logging flow. Let’s get to it.

[music]

0:00:52.5 CR: We are talking about the new geocache and trackable logging flow on geocaching.com, and I rounded up a couple of experts on this topic. I’ve got Jessica and Ari from HQ’s product team. So before we get into all the fun of telling people about this project, we’ll start by reintroducing you to everybody. You’ve both been on the podcast at different times, but for people that for whatever reason may have missed those, I can’t believe they did. They should rewind and listen to them because they were great when you guys were on before, but let’s tell everybody what you’re doing now, what your title is at HQ and what your day-to-day is like. And Jessica, I’ll start with you.

0:01:36.8 Jessica Randall: Awesome. Thank you, Chris. Jessica Randall, I’m a senior product designer and I primarily work on the website, so geocaching.com. And my day-to-day is working with the engineers and the product managers, looking at feedback from the community, deep diving into various projects and discussions, making wireframes and workflows. That’s a very quick summary of what I do.

0:02:14.5 CR: And can you beat that, Ari? That all sounds pretty exciting.

[laughter]

0:02:18.1 Ari Mendelson: Yeah, let’s see. My name is Ari, Geocaching username is Ari54321. Folks might recognize me on the podcast from two years ago when I came on to discuss GIFT. So I actually recently moved from the community team, which is where I was when I organized GIFT a couple of years ago, but the last year and a half or so, I had been working on Adventure Lab customer support, and now I’ve moved over to the product management team. So my new position is associate product owner for the web. So that means I’m working with Jessica pretty extensively on projects, but my general role is to help team one, which is one of our web development teams, to help prioritize work that we’re working on next, so prioritizing what new features we’re going to build, making sure that bugs are fixed, and there’s a whole long list of things that I can’t remember off the top of my head, but lots of collaboration with product designers, with our community team, and yeah, helping to shape the future of the website.

0:03:24.5 CR: And so you were both very involved in this project that we’re going to be talking about today, the new logging flow on the website on geocaching.com. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, for people that maybe haven’t read the release notes, and please feel free to do that, go to the Geocaching forums, read the release notes where there’s all the detail you can handle about this project. What’s the Reader’s Digest version of what this is about and what people will find when they start using this new logging flow? And I’ll let either one of you tackle that big question.

0:04:02.4 JR: I’ll start first and then you can kind of jump in, Ari. One of the big things is a consistent UI, user interface. So behaviors are the same across the whole entire logging flow project. So that’s for geocaching and trackables, like you mentioned. And it was also about getting rid of some technical debt, which is older system code that is just part of creating products. Things get outdated and then eventually we just need to kind of take the initiative to update the code bases and put things together. One of the things that folks probably, some probably had experience with, but the logging experience was, there was an older UI and then there was half of a newer one and I think that was updated in 2017. And then there was a way to kind of go back and forth, but then there was also a different system that the trackables was on. So we really wanted to kind of clean this up and put them all in one spot, which helps us do things faster in the future and try things out a lot easier because we’re only messing with one code base. Yeah.

0:05:21.7 CR: So yeah, that’s something I’ve seen people talking about in the community a little bit is I think some people have gotten used to the fact that they could, “Hey, I can opt out, I could go back and use this,” and people saying, “Why can’t you just keep having that?” Just keep having that opt out and I can always go back to the one that I’m used to. I think we’ve talked about this before, Jessica, on the previous podcast that I did with you. But for people that didn’t hear, why is that important to not have two different systems there that, the one that, “Hey, I don’t want to change. I like what I’m using. I don’t want to do this new thing.” Why can’t we just do it that way?

0:06:01.6 JR: Yeah. I mean, there is definitely a want to keep things unchanged. There’s the phrase, if it’s not broken, why try to change it or fix it? But really it becomes because we had, there was literally three or even four, I don’t even know that much, that would be an engineering ask, maybe Ari knows. There was like four different code stacks that all of this logging flow experience lived on, so it took a lot longer when we updated something. And we’ll get more into this, but there was an example when we had the date, when you selected a date on the geocaching log and we had to update that and take that away from the new experience. And there was a lot of folks asking why, especially because it was still in the trackable logging flow. Well, that was because they lived on two different code bases. And so we could update it and were compliant when we removed it from the geocaching logging flow, and we didn’t need to for the trackable. And the goal for a product is always to kind of be in this one location, clean space, because again, it makes things move faster. We can update quicker. And so that opt-out banner, I’ll admit I wasn’t here during that time, but we’ve implemented some of that before.

0:07:27.8 JR: And usually it’s when we’re trying things out and giving our users some time to kind of do the transition, because I think that was ultimately the goal in 2017 was to go back and move everything back. But change takes time. [laughter] And we had different priorities. So it was just something we prioritized this last year to get that all in one location. And so the opt-out banner was seen as a feature, but honestly it was limiting because it meant that our code… Like, those pages still lived in different code stacks. So it was more complicated when we wanted to make a change. And for the folks that did use both, there was definitely inconsistency between the two. And so we’re trying to eliminate that where possible. Ari, do you have anything to add?

0:08:20.6 AM: Yeah, I think another thing that we really tried to do was take the best of both worlds from both of those old logging experiences, because there were really good reasons that some people stuck with the older flow, some people preferred the newer ones for specific features that we had added to that 2017 version. And so with this new flow we kind of combined all the best features of both so that hopefully everyone has a better experience. It’s a little bit of a change in the experience as far as, maybe the button moved a little bit or something like that. But ultimately, there are lots of new features that people hopefully will be excited about.

0:09:01.4 CR: Yeah, let’s talk about the new features a little bit, Ari. So what is top of mind for you? I mean, I don’t know, we can list them all if you want to, but what are some of the ones that you think are the most valuable to users?

0:09:16.1 AM: One of the big ones is the pinned date feature. So, for a long time, we had a sort of sticky date. So it would remember if you’re going back and logging a whole bunch of geocaches that you logged on a previous date, it would remember the date from log to log. But now the user can actually control it. So there’s a little thumbtack icon where you can pin the date or unpin it. And that allows players to customize their experience. So if they want to use that feature, they can, or they can opt out now, which caused some confusion before when people didn’t know that the date was sticky. I know I’ve gotten confused by it before. Like, “Why is it using this other date?” “Oh, I forgot I had logged this other thing.” So now I can prevent that from happening with the new pinned date feature. I’m also excited that the maximum log text is now 5,000 characters instead of 4,000. That’s great for me because I love writing long logs.

0:10:11.0 CR: Oh geez.

0:10:13.4 AM: And now I have even more space for my crates.

[laughter]

0:10:18.2 CR: Oh no, you’re killing me. You’re killing me. For people like me that were on our GPS’s, we’re scrolling through the logs looking for a little hint from somebody’s log, and we got to scroll through now a 5,000 word log to get to the next one that might have something in there that we need. So thanks a lot, Ari.

[laughter]

0:10:36.3 AM: Guilty as charged.

[laughter]

0:10:41.8 AM: I’ll send you a list of some other folks. I know they do that. So you can send us all an email with your complaints perhaps.

0:10:45.2 CR: Oh, believe me. I’ve already got the list.

[laughter]

0:10:48.3 AM: Oh yeah, that’s true.

[laughter]

0:10:53.4 CR: Okay. So yeah, so you like that. So what else do you like?

0:10:57.8 AM: Another huge improvement is in the image uploading and editing. Now users can upload images while they’re writing their log and you can go in and add all of your image details, image name. You can also rotate. So that used to only be possible after you had submitted the log, after you had uploaded the image, then you could go edit it. Now you can do all of that while you’re logging. So there’s no need anymore to open up your log and upload images later or open up your log and rotate your images later. You can do it all right when you’re submitting a log in the first place, is a lot of really great, great future.

0:11:35.5 AM: Another big thing which we just had a blog post about is we have now renamed the Needs Maintenance and Needs Archive logs. So those are now Owner Attention Requested and Reviewer Attention Requested. So that’s another… I think really closing the loop. We’ve changed that in a lot of places in the app and website, but now it’s changed everywhere. And so that should hopefully give a lot of people more clarity as to what those log types really mean, should encourage people hopefully to use them more.

0:12:02.6 CR: Yeah, we could probably do a whole episode about about that change and what it might mean for the community. I think that Needs Archives became this… People saw that and thought, “Oh, if I use this, that’s the death knell for a geocache,” and not really understanding that there was more to it. If you posted that log, it didn’t just automatically mean the cache was going to get archived. It meant… Well, it meant the same thing it means now. It meant that a reviewer was going to see it and they take a look at things. And same thing with Owner Attention Requests as opposed to Needs Maintenance. Yeah. I think that’s… I hope it’ll be a good change. I’ve seen some conversation in the community, mostly very positive. Some folks thinking, “Oh, it’s not going to make a difference,” but well, let’s see. Let’s see if it makes a difference before we pass judgment on it.

0:12:52.3 CR: And Ari, as you were talking about photos, it made me think of one of the topics that I’ve seen the community talking about, which is the limit on file sizes when you upload photo. And when this new log flow was released, the limit was five megabytes. And I think an example of how the team listens to community feedback and there’s already been some changes, and one of those is with this file upload limit. So can you talk about where that’s going to be going? Don’t know if it’s already going to be out by the time we publish this podcast, but it is going to be happening at some point.

0:13:28.9 AM: As I think probably most listeners of this podcast knows, serving the communities at the heart of everything we do at HQ, it’s what really keeps us going. And so of course, as part of a big release like this one, we keep close track of all the feedback that we get from the community. And this was really one of the biggest things that people asked me, “Why can I only upload five megabyte images now?” And so after some research, we realized we can raise it a little higher. So we’ll be raising the limit to 10 megabytes. There are a few other changes that we’re monitoring feedback for. And so as with any big project we’ll make sure that everything stays working, well, indefinitely. But listening to feedback for a little minor tweaks that we can make even after releasing.

0:14:13.0 CR: One thing I’ll point out to people if they haven’t been in the release notes thread in our Geocaching forums is that you will see that Ari is in there pretty regularly answering questions, providing some great information, and I think, again, just demonstrating that you and I’m sure Jessica and others on the team are reading the feedback there, and I have to imagine there are a variety of other outlets that you are keeping an eye on to get suggestions and feedback from the community as they are using this product.

0:14:44.7 JR: Oh yeah, I’m on forums, I’m on the social medias, I’m on Reddit. I am usually producing any sort of community feedback where I can get it. It helps my job of advocating for our users and our players and making sure that we’re building things that they can use and that they want.

0:15:05.5 CR: So you guys as players, because I know you both are geocachers as well, so as players kind of putting on your player hat, what do you like about this new logging flow as opposed to the various flows that we have in the past? Now that you’re using the new logging flow as players, what do you find that you like about it so far?

0:15:26.1 JR: I really do like the pin date. That was something I didn’t actually know was a thing. That was one of those confusing behaviors that I didn’t realize, so now seeing that, I like that. I also like being able to see a preview of our logs. That was something that lived on the older UI, but not… So I like being able to do that. And being able to format my logs, that has been cool ’cause now I can add emojis and add a little bit more to my logs when I’m logging. Those are some of my favorite things.

0:15:58.6 AM: I won’t mention the 5,000 character thing again, but…

0:16:03.7 CR: Thank you Ari for that. Appreciate it.

[laughter]

0:16:04.3 JR: As you mention it.

0:16:05.4 AM: If I casually drop it back in the conversation. My favorite… Actually, one of my favorite things as a player is going in and editing logs on my phone, because it used to be when you want to edit a former log, one of my old logs, you’d have to go into the very old page, which is not optimized for mobile. So it’s like a desktop web page. You can zoom in on your phone as if you’re looking at a big monitor, but on your tiny device. No longer. Now with the new logging flow, it’s that one consistent experience is optimized for mobile. And so when I go into edit old logs, it’s a beautiful and seamless experience. And that’s really one of my favorite experience things. I also personally love, and this is another kind of new feature we haven’t touched on yet, is we removed the report a problem feature that was part of the 2017 logging flow and that would automatically generate what we now call owner attention requested or reviewer attention requested log, which didn’t have any details in it. So cache owners or reviewers would have to look at the find log to see what the issue was. Now I can go in and I can submit those log types separately and detail exactly what the issue is that requires the owner attention or the reviewers attention. So that’s another personal favorite of mine.

0:17:27.3 JR: Yeah, one of the things that I also like, I like that if I make a log, I’ll get a message from the person that deleted it as to why. So that was something that we’ve added is the ability for a admin or the cache owner to write a message to the log owner when they delete a log if it contains a spoiler or something else. And so now we’ll be able to communicate a little bit more because maybe they just didn’t know. And I like the thought of our cache owners helping out our community and letting them have reasons of what happened.

0:18:08.4 CR: Yeah, I’ve seen people talking about that in various places too that they like that that’s there because if you had a log deleted before and you were like, “Well, what did I do? Did I say something wrong? Did I… ” And you really had no idea. And so it is really great. For me, one thing I’ve noticed is that I was just so used to the old system and I was so used to the various… It turns out, extra steps that you had to do at times, finish your log, then you’d upload a photo separately. Or like Ari was saying, if you wanted to edit, rotate a photo or just various things, it was always an extra step. And I was so used to it that it just never occurred to me that that was a big deal. And now… Or I’m looking at the collapsible sections again, never occurred to me that those were taken up a lot of real estate on the page. And now I’m like, “Oh, they’re not, I can collapse those and they don’t take up as much real estate.” So there’s stuff that as I’m using it, I’m just kind of realizing, “Wow, I was doing a lot more work before that I don’t have to do now.” And that’s a really nice thing.

0:19:15.0 JR: Yeah. I’m really glad you brought that up. ‘Cause that is one of the things that I really strive for when we’re redesigning or like marrying two pages together, is reducing steps. And usually, yes, people, I spoke on this last time I was here, hate change. They don’t enjoy it because when you have a flow that you’re just do consistently or daily, weekly, it becomes second nature. And it’s just a rhythm. It’s like, “Da, da, da, da, da. I’m going to do it. These are my steps. I go through step one to 10.” And then when somebody takes three steps away from you and then you’re like, “Wait, now I have to go to one to seven.” Then it’s confusing. But then eventually you’ll learn, you’ll use it enough where you’re like, “Oh yeah, okay, this is cooler or this is an improved workflow.” And so that’s something that I really do strive for. I really, I enjoy it when people notice how much kind of… How much more time… Or not more time… How much more time they get back. But that’s what we’re saying, but how much time a process takes has been reduced by kind of just this improvement and how you can easily be able to find things in the future even though they may have changed a little bit, but you’ll get to it. And then it’ll become second nature again.

0:20:39.4 CR: So as you’ve both been and as the team has been watching feedback from the community in various places, what are you hearing the most from folks? I mean, we don’t have to go through all of it, but are there any themes that are coming across from the feedback that you’re seeing so far from the community?

0:21:00.8 JR: One of the things that I’ve noticed in the feedback that we’ve gotten is the fact that the submit button with a post button is now kind of not in view in the UI. And that’s because we’ve actually added in a preview section and there’s just a little bit more information in the UI. So it naturally has kind of gone below but if you collapse those kinds of previews or your trackable section it should get back up into the main view. I just thought that was a really interesting feedback that folks got.

0:21:37.0 AM: That reminds me of a number of… I’ve seen sort of a theme in some of feedback of things that seem like a worse user experience but are actually better when you consider all the different ways that people use the tool. And that’s part of what made this such a big project, which I think you probably know better than I do Jessica because you’ve been working on it longer. The logging flow is used for so many different reasons. So from a player perspective, log and finds DNFs need maintenance from a cache owner perspective, archiving of cache, disabling event announcements from a reviewer perspective, reviewers publish caches, they disable caches, they post reviewer notes. And so there are many, many, many different ways that people use it.

0:22:23.7 AM: And so in some cases like that post button example, the post button was way down at the bottom of the page. If you have 20,000 trackables, that would also be the case in the old logging flow because that long list of trackables would also push it down but now you can collapse it. So that’s a plus. But also if someone doesn’t have any trackables then that’s not feedback we’ve heard from them because it’s not pushing their post button down. And so it’s always very interesting to me to hear all the different feedback from different use cases. And because there are so many different people that use the logging flow there are always going to be little things that we missed here and there. Thankfully, we didn’t miss any major issues though. So that’s really the great news about this kind of logging.

0:23:12.1 CR: Is there anything either one of you would like people to know that we haven’t talked about about this project or maybe you can tell people how to get feedback if they’d like to do that? Just kind of any last thoughts as we kind of wrap things up here.

0:23:24.9 JR: One of the things that I’m also really proud about for this site is the view geocache log, like the details page. It wasn’t something that I was actually really well aware of before this project. I never went to go see a single logs page. I just look at in the activity feed. And so that was a fun redesign and it looks like a lot better in the sense of where things are and button management, and we’ve added just some labels to the page. And I’m really proud of that page. As far as giving feedback, we’d love to go on the forums where, like we said, we’re monitoring those. If you make a mention on social media, I’ll probably see it somewhere.

0:24:10.1 AM: In general, if you experience any bugs or anything, whether it’s on the logging flow or not, I always recommend people kind of restart their system. If you’re in a web browser, clear your cache, things like that. And if those don’t work, feel free to write in to our help center as well. ‘Cause sometimes those reports are really helpful in helping us see if there is a bug that’s widespread.

0:24:34.1 JR: Another good tip is to always make sure your browser is up to date.

0:24:37.1 AM: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That’s part of the benefit of this release is the new logging flow is built on really modern web technology. And the only disadvantage of that is you have to have a recent web browser. So if you’ve been waiting to update your web browser for whatever reason, never a bad idea to update it.

0:24:56.6 CR: So if you haven’t used it yet, then you haven’t been logging anything the last several days. So get out there and use it, start logging your caches and your trackables, and test this new system out. I really appreciate you guys taking some time to talk about it. And I’m sure that you’ll be looking forward to hearing more about what the community has to say about this whole thing.

0:25:15.3 JR: Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. I really enjoy talking about these bigger projects that we’re on, and when we finally get to share them with the community.

0:25:27.4 AM: Yeah. Thank you so much for hosting us. Keep the feedback coming everyone. We really, really appreciate you.

[music]

0:25:36.5 CR: That was Ari and Jessica from HQ’s product team. Now we referenced an earlier episode where Jessica was on and she talked about her role as a senior product designer. That was episode 58 back in January. You can find and listen to that one and learn more about what goes into designing products like the logging flow. And if there is a topic that you would like us to discuss on inside HQ, just drop me a line podcast@geocaching.com is our address. Thank you for listening from Jessica and Ari and me and all the lackeys at geocaching HQ, happy caching.

Ep 63: Not-so-hidden features in the Geocaching® app

If you’re new to the official Geocaching® app or even if you use it regularly, new features may have flown under your radar in recent months. Nicole from HQ’s Mobile Team is here to chat about a few of her favorites.

You can listen to the episode via this page, or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. If you use an aggregator to subscribe to podcasts, you can access the RSS feed here.

A full transcript is available here.

InsideGeocachingHQ_Podcast
Inside Geocaching HQ Podcast
Ep 63: Not-so-hidden features in the Geocaching® app
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Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 63): Not-so-hidden features in the Geocaching app

(link to podcast)

0:00:14.4 Chris Ronan: Hello everybody and welcome to inside Geocaching HQ. This is the podcast about things that are happening at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. My name is Chris Ronan. My geocaching username is Rock Chalk and we are in HQ at this very moment. Sometimes I’m in my house when I do this thing, but I’m at HQ because I get the chance to have a real life in person conversation with Nicole from the mobile team who I meant to look this up before we started. How many times you’ve been on the podcast, Nicole, because you’re part of like the three or four timers club. I’m not sure. Have you ever watched on Saturday Night Live? They have this running joke with hosts that have hosted X number of times. I feel like we should have that for the podcast. I think Brian would probably be the leader, but I think you’re right up in there. ‘Cause you’ve been on a number of times in your various roles at the company. So, we’re gonna be talking about the Geocaching app because you’re on the mobile team. But let’s get started first by telling people who you are, what you do at HQ and what you’ve done. ‘Cause you’ve been here for several years now at HQ.

0:01:23.2 Nicole Jendro: Yeah, it’s good to be back. Thank you for having me again. My name is Nicole. My username is Nykkole written N-Y-K-K-O-L-E. I’ve been at HQ for eight years now. And I started out on the team with you, Chris.

0:01:39.6 CR: That’s right.

0:01:40.9 NJ: Do you remember back in the day?

0:01:44.1 CR: And you escaped.

0:01:44.2 NJ: So I was doing review support, volunteer support and then I moved into a product role. And so I was a product manager on the website. And now for the last, oh gosh, three-ish, four-ish years, maybe I’ve been…

0:02:02.6 CR: Time’s just a mess now, isn’t it? [laughter]

0:02:02.7 NJ: I’ve been the product manager on the mobile app.

0:02:07.1 CR: Yeah. And so you’ve had this great amount of experience throughout the company over the years and now with the mobile team for a few years. And so, today we’re gonna talk about, I guess what we’re calling not so hidden features within the Geocaching app. And I think this conversation, the idea for it maybe even dates back to when we were in Colorado geocaching together earlier this year and we were walking along and you were showing me different stuff. And I think for some people… Somebody like me who thinks of themselves as a really experienced geocacher, and I think you can’t teach me anything. I know all there is to know, but somebody like me, I get into my routine. At least I know how I think to do everything with the app or with the GPS or whatever I’m using to go find caches.

0:02:55.9 CR: And I’m in a routine and I don’t really deviate from that routine very much. And then somebody like you says, “Hey, did you know about this?” And I’m like well, “No, not really, because that’s on a screen that I don’t think to tap on.” And so that’s what this conversation is about is kind of talking about some of those things that maybe you do know about them, but maybe you’re like me and you just look up one day and you’re like “Oh wait,” HQ’s mobile team has added a bunch of stuff since I started using this app and I’ve missed some of the stuff that’s… There wasn’t a huge announcement about it or maybe there was and I missed it. So that’s kinda what this is about and there is a lot of cool stuff. And I think the thing we were gonna start with was how to find cool caches or some of the tools that might lead you to finding some of the more interesting caches that are out there by using the Geocaching app.

0:03:47.4 NJ: Yeah. One of my favorite things that we released early this year is the indicator of highly favorite caches on the map. It’s that pink heart. And so as the map loads, you get about 300 caches and the top 10% will be highlighted. And so what I really like about this feature is that as you travel instead of using the filter to say, I want any caches that have more than 50 favorite points, well if you are in… I don’t know, rural Wisconsin, you might only get two caches. I don’t know that for a fact. No offense to rural Wisconsin.

0:04:21.9 CR: Yeah, That was a very specific example. Just throwing out rural Wisconsin. But there’s some great caches. I was there for the West Bend Mega earlier this year, which you’ve been to as well in the past.

0:04:32.9 NJ: I have. And that’s why I used this feature. And so I know for a fact that there’s a lot of cool caches in Wisconsin because we used highly favorite caches on the map to identify them.

0:04:42.2 CR: And I really love that feature too. And there’s been a lot of discussion I’ve seen among the community about, “oh, well they should use percentage of favorite points or as opposed to,” well, we’ve got the reasons. It would be a huge low difference. I’m sure to do percentage, but just total favorite points. Is such a big improvement over not having anything like it was before.

0:05:00.8 NJ: Yeah, we did actually look at what it would look like with percentage just, and between the two algorithm, there was only about a 10% difference. So, and there is like having the percentage, it has its own issues, right? No algorithm is perfect. And so if a new cache gets published and the first person gives it a favorite point, now it’s at 100%. But if you find a cache that I hide, I hope you give it a favorite point. That would be very skewed.

0:05:24.7 CR: So yeah, the high favorite point indicator is… I’ve really loved it as I’ve been traveling and it’s all, I don’t know, it’s kind of almost gotten a little exciting when I see the heart pop up and it makes me think, oh, that’s something I need to check out. So that’s a good one.

0:05:40.6 NJ: And I’ve actually used it with the filter of minimum favorite points. So, as every region is different, I’ll look at what is this area’s highly favorite caches. And so if it’s, let’s say it’s around 50 for that area, then I will put in 50 and then I will get a wider radius and know every cache on my map that’s highly favorite for that region. But I’ll still get the top 10% of those high favorited caches.

0:06:08.0 CR: Right. I never see right away we’re only what, three minutes into this thing. And I’ve already learned something that I hadn’t thought about. Well, that’s a great way to use it. I hadn’t done that before myself. So next time though, I’m gonna filters.

0:06:22.7 NJ: Yeah, I love using the filters depending on what kind of outing I’m planning. For example, when I go out caching with kids, I like to filter for regular and large, large-sized caches. And then I’ll make sure to bring some little toys that the kids can either leave and have a lesson in letting something go for other people or a trait of theirs, I’ll swag in the cache, attributes filtering for attributes. I do that a lot as well. I really like field puzzles and night caches, although for night caches, I must say it can be confusing to filter it because there’s multiple attributes that could indicate a night cache, like UV light required or flashlight required and if the… So yeah, so I’ll do multiple searches basically if I wanna do a night cache outing, I’ll filter for a night cache recommended at night, flashlight required UV light required, and I put them all on a list and then I have my night cache list.

0:07:19.6 CR: Mystery caches. And a couple of interesting things there that people may or may not know about.

0:07:23.2 NJ: Yeah. For mystery caches and multi-caches as well, I have a little bit of my own routine. So I don’t know there might be better ways to do it, but I use the personal note. So from the cache details page, you can tap the three dots in the top right to open the personal note. So I will copy anything relevant from the description that I need to answer a puzzle out into the personal note. And that’s where then we’ll have the final coordinates or the next stage. And then I copy those coordinates and then I go to waypoints and I paste the coordinates in as a name so that I can easily fill them into the fields for the waypoint.

0:08:00.0 CR: Yeah, that was a game changer when we added to where the personal note syncs with the website. That was something that for the longest time, way back in the day of the old app, when you could do a personal note but it didn’t sync. Oh that was the worst. And so when we added that, and that’s been a few years now. But that was really great.

0:08:23.3 NJ: So for Corrected coordinates, specifically for mystery caches, when you go to the waypoint screen and go into the posted coordinates, you can edit. Tap the edit icon and change them to the corrected coordinates and it’ll actually be the corrected coordinates icon and sync with the web and everything. And so then that icon is on the map where the final is and you… Instead of having an additional way point and remembering which of the caches you’ve already solved.

0:08:51.5 CR: Right. And kinda putting you on the spot here, but I’ll put one of my Christmas wishes to, I’d love to be able to change it for some of the other cache types.

0:09:02.1 NJ: I agree.

0:09:03.1 CR: Where I go letterbox, stuff like that.

0:09:04.6 NJ: Like any cache type that has a final coordinate should have that. And it is on my wishlist as well. I have a 200 plus item wishlist from…

0:09:13.8 CR: Oh, you’re a…

0:09:13.9 NJ: Me and players and lackeys that have come to me. It is very, very hard to prioritize and very painful.

0:09:20.6 CR: Over 200.

0:09:21.6 NJ: Yeah, I can send you a link to it, [laughter]

0:09:24.9 CR: Yeah. Well that’s just gonna make me sad. [laughter] I’ll be like ” Oh, I wanted that too.” So yeah, someday, hopefully we’ll get those on there.

0:09:33.6 NJ: Working through them.

0:09:35.8 CR: Yeah. So yeah, some stuff there on mystery caches then friends, that’s something that I feel like has been a higher priority in recent years to try to find ways that people can connect with other geocachers via the app.

0:09:50.2 NJ: Yeah. So we released the option to add friends via the app last year, so that’s also fairly new. We always had friends… For a long time had friends on the website. And now from the profile in the app, you can tap that icon of the two little people in the top to add.

0:10:06.6 CR: As we both go to our app.

0:10:09.6 NJ: As we go down to open the friend screen. And so that will give you a list of all your friends and then you will also see any friend requests if you have any. And then on your profile you can expand the header to get to your QR code. And so when you meet someone at an event, they can scan the QR code which allows them to add you as a friend.

0:10:36.1 CR: Yeah. That’s one that Cindy, who we both work with mentioned to me the other day when we were talking and I knew about it at one point. I think I… Did it debut right around the 20th anniversary celebration?

0:10:51.3 NJ: That’s correct, yes.

0:10:51.4 CR: Here in Seattle. Yeah. So I feel like that weekend we were all going around showing our QR codes to everybody and then I…

0:10:55.9 CR: And Signal had a QR code that puts yeah…

0:11:00.7 CR: Q signal had a QR code, and I wonder how many friends, Signal got that weekend. I have to go back and look. But yeah, it’s one of those things that then I kind of forget about it because it’s… I don’t often click on my little avatar there in the app. So I’ll have to remember to do that the next time I go to an event.

0:11:15.7 NJ: And when I meet people at events I will often then look at the will attends because from the lock screen you can tap on someone’s icon to see their profile. And from that you have the add friend button as well.

0:11:32.1 CR: Oh, okay. Yeah. Right.

0:11:33.3 NJ: So You don’t have to scan someone’s code. There’s multiple ways to add a friend.

0:11:35.0 CR: Sure. Yeah. There you go. Speaking of event caches, adding them to a calendar, that’s actually something that I only… I’m kind of ashamed to say, recently started doing. And again, kind of just one of those little things that makes a big difference.

0:11:52.1 NJ: Yeah. And we actually had an improvement that I don’t think we had release notes about because it was such a small thing. The add to calendar link in the app used to create a full day event in your calendar, and so then you still had to go to the GC code and copy it over and open the app or whatever to see when the event was actually at. But now when you tap add to calendar, it will actually create the event for the duration that the event is scheduled.

0:12:15.9 CR: Yeah. That’s great. What else about friends that comes to mind for you?

0:12:21.7 NJ: Yeah, all my friends who are geocachers are also my friends in the Geocaching app, because when I go geocaching and I am stumped and don’t know where to look, I always check the activity screen and we can see all logs, but you can also specifically see your friend’s logs and I…

0:12:41.2 CR: Very helpful if you’re looking for that phone a friend situation. Right?

0:12:44.0 NJ: And I also know which of my friends have more helpful logs or like hide little hints like you know the classic I was stumped at this location.

0:12:56.9 CR: Ah, yes.

0:12:57.0 NJ: Or there was something about nuts and bolts at a recent cache where… And the cache was a little bolt.

0:13:02.4 CR: Right.

0:13:06.7 NJ: And there was like a word joke in the log that helped me figure out what it was.

0:13:11.3 CR: We were laughing during a recent. I did a podcast interview with Ari and Jessica about the new logging flow and they expanded the number of characters that were possible for a log, which Ari loves because he types these gargantuan logs. And I hate because I have to scroll past those logs to get to ones that have some sort of a little hint, a little nugget that I can like stumped or whatever that might help me find the cache. So we were laughing about that.

0:13:42.2 NJ: Yeah. Another thing I really like is when you look at someone else’s profile, you can see their heights. So from someone else’s profile.

0:13:51.1 CR: Again, as we both go to the app.

0:13:54.6 NJ: Oh yeah. What’s the flow again.

0:13:55.3 CR: I wish we had video of this [laughter] You could see us just both looking away from each other as we’re trying to go to a cache and look at the logs, look at the activity. Okay, now I’m going to a person and there’s their heights.

0:14:06.6 NJ: There’s their heights. So yeah. So the finds and favorite points, line items, you can’t tap them. And you used to not be able to tap the heights line item, but now you can and you see a list of all of the active heights. And so I love seeing what my friends hit. I’m much more aware now what my friends have hidden than before. ‘Cause it was harder to see a list of someone else’s heights. Especially on the mobile when on the mobile, when on the phone. But also when I’m in an area where I might not know all the caches and hiders and I find a cool cache I can now see there’s another cool cache from the same CO nearby. That is one of my favorite features. You can also, another profile related cool feature we have is you can see your own finds list. So you can’t see other people’s finds, but you can see your own. And so if I wanted to show you the cache with the nuts and bolts, I can actually now find it in my finds list because I recently logged it. And so I can quickly show you, “oh, I was out. Here’s the cool cache I found.”

0:15:02.9 CR: Right. Well this is wild. I’m gonna… Again, I’m kind of, I feel a little embarrassed to say this, but I really haven’t looked at my friend’s hides via the app and it’s really kind of cool now I’m just kind of scrolling through the list of my friends and I was like “wow, I didn’t know that they owned a couple of, well, for instance, a couple of adventure… It shows of your own adventures too.” So, wow. Now I’ve.

0:15:34.0 NJ: And we just talked about Ari, when this feature came out, I looked at, because A, his geocache name states was ACs on top. So I looked at his heights and I realized he had a hide that was in walking distance from my house, [laughter]

0:15:46.1 CR: Oh, wow. I’m seeing he has two. He has one in DC in District Columbia. ‘Cause his family lives out there, so.

0:15:56.5 NJ: Yeah. And his puzzle caches are all kind of shout out to Ari.

0:16:00.5 CR: Yes. Shout out to Ari. Well, gosh, now I know what I’m doing tonight. I’ll just go through the list and play around looking at everybody’s hides. So yeah, there we go. You’ve added another thing for me to check out. And again, we kind of went over it pretty quick, but I really do like being able to look at which of my friends have logged a cache. Because again, it’s so great to be able to say, “okay, I can reach out to that person if I’m having trouble.” And it’s just so easy right there as you’re out in the field. So anything else with…

0:16:31.6 NJ: Well, friends related, adjacent lists when you plan on outing together the fortnight caches, for example, I’ll create a list and then I’ll share it with the friend that I wanna go caching with. And then they can make a copy from the website, but that all syncs with the app. So they will have the list that I created as a copy in their list tab as well.

0:16:50.8 CR: I’m not sure if we’re allowed to talk about stuff. We’re working on other stuff. I can say that. Right?

0:16:56.7 NJ: We are working on other stuff.

0:16:58.4 CR: I can’t be specific. I’m not gonna… Don’t worry, I’m not gonna spill any beans. I’m just saying we’re working on…

0:17:04.2 NJ: And I wish we had a video.

0:17:05.9 CR: We’re working on other stuff… I just, oh, I wanna say something. And I can’t say it. And I’m not going to. I’m not gonna say it.

0:17:11.6 NJ: But there’s cool stuff coming.

0:17:11.8 CR: There’s cool stuff coming. Thank you. I’m allowed to say that, right?

0:17:15.4 NJ: Yeah.

0:17:16.3 CR: You can say that?

0:17:19.4 NJ: You can always say that.

0:17:19.5 CR: It’s vague, but no, there is cool stuff coming and yeah, it’s great to be sharing your list with friends on the web and then making copies in the app. That’s great.

0:17:32.8 NJ: And then of course you can download a list for offline. I really like that feature as well, especially if I travel internationally and I’m not sure if my plan will allow me to access Connectivity.

0:17:42.8 CR: Yeah. And I still run into people that are very experienced that didn’t know you could do that so much or maybe they do most of their caching with the GPS. And they just haven’t used the app as much. And then they’ll say, Hey, is it possible to do this? Of course. Yeah. Of course. You’ve been able to do that for a long time. So I’m like you though. Well, if I’m traveling or if I’m gonna be here in Seattle, we have the mountains not too far away and you lose cell coverage. Pretty commonly out there. So having the list downloaded is really huge.

0:18:13.7 NJ: Yeah. Agreed.

0:18:17.8 CR: We wanna talk about experimental features. That’s maybe one of my favorite things about the app. And that’s a premium feature. We should mention that.

0:18:28.4 NJ: Yeah. Premium members get access to these experimental features. They’re different on iOS and Android for various reasons. Currently iOS has a couple of more and I know you are on iOS.

0:18:36.9 CR: Yeah. So, on iOS I have show favorite points on logs. I have ads/remove favorite points, view, select trackables in AR and caches with trackables. So those are the things that premium members have access to in iOS on experimental features. And before we get into talking specifically about these things, we wanna mention that, make sure that you have to go to your profile, your settings in the app, and then click on experimental features and turn on, toggle the ones that you want. And if for some reason you log out and then when you log back in, you gotta do it again. So, that’s a stumbling block for me sometimes is, sometimes I’ll either purposely log out or I’ll just be logged out for some weird reason and then I just forget to go into those experimental features and to… ‘Cause I do like seeing favorite points on logs in particular. That’s probably the one that I like the most out of what’s on there right now. And so I gotta remember to turn it back on again. So those are the things with iOS and then what do you have there on Android?

0:19:51.7 NJ: On Android we have filter for caches with trackables. So it’s an additional filter that you can turn on and MT DT grid search and which is also an additional filter, but you also see it on the statistics screen where you can… If you have not filled your grid yet. So for you these features would not be helpful Chris. There’s 80-150 loops. So how many do you have right now?

0:20:15.1 CR: It’s still a great feature.

0:20:16.8 NJ: It’s still a great feature. That one actually motivated me to fill my D/T grid because, I don’t know if you remember, but before we had that feature, I found it really difficult to figure out which caches I needed. And I reached out to you and you created multiple lists.

0:20:31.4 CR: I did.

0:20:32.0 NJ: For me to find, missing D/T grids, but with this feature I have filled my D/T grid finally.

0:20:38.0 CR: Wow. I don’t know if I knew that. When did that happen?

0:20:45.0 NJ: Oh. A while ago.

0:20:45.1 CR: Wow.

0:20:45.0 NJ: Over a year ago.

0:20:45.1 CR: Oh. Okay. Now time is, was there a party or anything or did it just kind of pass by.

0:20:48.8 NJ: It was on my HQ 20 celebration card.

0:20:51.5 CR: Oh yeah. When we put like our favorite geocaching.

0:20:58.4 NJ: Achievement. Yeah.

0:20:58.4 CR: Okay. And so I think we’ve probably done an episode about experimental features in the past, but it’s been a long time ago. So just to kind of refresh people’s memory. How would you describe what experimental features are? How do they get in there? How do they graduate out of experimental features? Just a brief overview of how the whole section, what that’s about?

0:21:20.8 NJ: Yeah, with experimental features. We have a very different process. So some of these are developed kind of very fast, so there’s not as rigorous, what I would say, like control. So they might not be fully fleshed out, they might not be working like 100%, not all the edge cases are covered. And so because of this kind of very fast process, the two platforms are not in the same track. So there’s a little bit of flexibility as well for developers to work on one thing more than another. And so that’s kind of how the two platforms get out of sync. But because we wanna sometimes move fast and put out cool things, but we value having the platforms be in alignment with experimental features. This was kind of the space that we created to put in things in front of premium members before they are ready to get out into the world.

0:22:07.5 NJ: And sometimes they don’t get out into the world. So some features in the experimental features menu might not be used very often or they end up not actually solving a problem. And so we do monitor the data, but once we decide that it is ready to graduate and so the profile, for example, that did start out as an experimental feature when they graduate to the full app, so to say, then we make sure that the platforms are aligned and that everything works and all the edge cases and offline stays and everything is fully functioning.

0:22:41.1 CR: Okay. So you generally want to have, like you were saying, both apps be consistent. And so in order for a feature to move on, it has to be ready to move on in both Android and iOS?

0:22:53.9 NJ: Yeah, so for the most part we want the apps to be in parity. But for example iOS has Siri and Android doesn’t. So if we ever did something with Siri, we would not be able to have the apps in parity.

0:23:03.5 CR: Well, we have listed a lot of things for people to check out and for me to check out. I think I’ve caught myself with at least a handful of different features that I need to. And like I said, I’ll spend the rest of today looking through my friend’s hides, their list of hides via the app. I don’t know. Do you think we covered?

0:23:24.4 NJ: Yeah.

0:23:24.9 CR: We covered a lot, didn’t we?

0:23:27.1 NJ: I would be interested if any of the listeners have favorite features that we didn’t list.

0:23:30.7 CR: Sure. Yeah. Put those in the comments there on the podcast page or when we release this on social media. I feel like I just like to keep talking. We haven’t seen each other in a while. [laughter], anything else you want to cover while we’re here? Okay. Well, in the meantime…

0:23:50.1 NJ: In the meantime.

0:23:50.5 CR: This was great and it’s always fun to hear what the mobile team is up to. I see they’re all meeting together. Most of you I think are together this week here at HQ.

0:24:02.5 NJ: Yeah we’re all in the office.

0:24:02.6 CR: Yeah. And hopefully, I’m sure planning some exciting stuff for the coming months and into 2024. And so it’ll be fun to see what comes out.

0:24:11.9 NJ: Yeah. I’m looking forward to be back and talking about the cool stuff that’s coming.

0:24:16.6 CR: Ooh, the cliffhanger. I love it. She’s shaking her head [laughter], but she already said it. We’re gonna hold her to it. All right. Thank you Nicole.

0:24:25.5 NJ: Thanks Chris.

0:24:25.5 CR: That was Nicole, the product manager for HQ’s mobile team. Open up the official Geocaching app and check out some of the stuff that we talked about. And like Nicole said, if there are features that you especially like tell us about it in the comments section of the podcast page. And if there’s something you would like us to cover on our podcast, send an email to podcast@geocaching.com. Until then, from me and Nicole and all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.