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C.D. Hughes Design
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Fieldnote2024

A field research app for people wearing gloves

Mobile data capture designed for environmental scientists working in weather that ruins notebooks.

Fieldnote cover image

Overview

Fieldnote replaces the waterproof notebook that environmental survey teams have carried for decades. It has to work cold, wet, and offline.

The challenge

Standard mobile patterns assume a bare fingertip and a stable connection. Neither holds on a riverbank in February.

Approach

We designed oversized capture targets, a one-thumb entry flow, and an offline-first sync model that shows exactly what has and has not made it back to the server.

Outcome

Field teams recorded twice as many observations per survey day, and transcription errors from end-of-day data entry effectively went away.

Observations/day
2x
Offline capable
100%
Timeline
11 weeks
One-thumb capture flow
One-thumb capture flow
Offline sync states
Offline sync states
Glove-tested target sizing
Glove-tested target sizing