User comments and NSF (National Science Foundation) reviews

user comments

The size of the Tangled field guide makes its installation more complex than the installation of most other smartphone applications.  Fortunately, the installation process is getting simpler and the users of the earlier versions of the Tangled field guide have been real troopers.  Perhaps due to the shear joy of finishing the installation, user comments have been overwhelmingly positive.

• "The more I use your software the more excited I am to use it."
  
  
• "Much of my birding around home is by sound and this program is the best interface I've found yet for audio use.  What an ultimate field guide."
  
  
• "I got it working - and all I gotta say is WOW!!!! Very nice .... and for the price it is incredible!!!!"
  
  
• "It has been wonderful to create lists that I can then upload to eBird."
  
  
• "Thanks for this excellent program."
  
  
• "This is the bird guide I have been waiting for."
  
  
• "This software is miles ahead of the competition.  It is immediately evident that an awful lot of thought & effort has gone into this.  Thanks for making it affordable."
  
  
• "This should be on every birder's cell phone, bar none."
  
  

NSF reviews

To date, the progression of every field guide smartphone application has stalled in the early adopter portion of the technology adoption lifecycle.  Geoffrey Moore saw this technology adoption stalling problem a lot in his work as a venture capitalist at Regis McKenna Inc.  He observed that most of the products that stalled were discontinuous technology innovations.  In other words, they were products that required a change in customer behavior.  For example, a new formula of toothpaste that greatly increases oral health would be a technical innovation, but not a discontinuous technical innovation because the customers would be brushing their teeth as usual.  However, if the new formula were to be applied as a rinse prior to brushing, it would be a discontinuous technical innovation because the added rinse step would be a change in customer behavior.

The Tangled field guide is a discontinuous technical innovation because it requires a different customer behavior than is required by paperback field guides (e.g., different user interface, and a need to charge batteries).  Because discontinuous technical innovations are novel and they generally end up falling short of mainstream distribution, the mixed reviews and skepticism by the National Science Foundation (NSF) reviewers are understandable.

• "The development of an electronic field guide is past due, and this project has recognized a clear need.  The PI [Principal Investigator] has the skills to deliver the product."
  
  
• "The proposal lacks innovation.  An e-book can easily replace a paperback field guide."
  
  [response: Wouldn't an e-book of a paperback field guide with a single-access identification key also have a single-access identification key?]
  
  
• "The smartphone implementation promises convenient access to field guide information."
  
  
• "The proposed activity promises making available field guides on smartphones for a theoretically unlimited range of species.  This could offer benefits to different education fields once such phones are ubiquitous.  However, in spite of rapid adoption rates of such phones, this is still hard to imagine in the foreseeable future.  The prohibitively high cost [of smartphones] likely prevents the use of the targeted solution by formal education institutions for many years to come and drastically reduces the potential societal benefits of the project."
  
  [response: Aren't field guides used most in informal education settings, such as a recreational hike?]

user group

There are lots of user messages in the Tangled field guide user group.  Most of them are questions about the relatively complex (compared to other smartphone applications) installation instructions.