Beescape NexGen is part of a multi-year study on user centered design. The original tool was developed by a team of entomologists who sought to share data about pollinator health with stakeholder groups such as beekeepers, allowing them to make decisions such as where to place their hives. Cartographers were invited to the team to assess an initial version of the tool through a user evaluation, which demonstrated that while the data was interesting to users, it was not displayed in a useful way. The team then took a step back and conducted a needs assessment via focus groups, which better revealed what users hoped for in the tool. I joined the project around this time and assisted in creating a mockup of what the tool might look like. A programmer implemented this design, and in a follow-up user evaluation that I led, the tool seems to be significantly improved and better meet the stakeholders’ needs. Currently, we are working on translating Beescape to mobile devices, which I also developed mockups for.

The Beescape tool is available at beescape.psu.edu

You can learn more about the Beescape project and the data behind it from the Center for Pollinator Research.

Beescape is part of a larger BeeSuite of tools. The tool BeeSpatial, for example, allows advanced users to access the geospatial data behind Beescape.

Here, I display mockups I made as we develop the mobile version of Beescape. The desktop version of Beescape displays a significant amount of data in a right sidebar.

In the mobile version, the default screen (left) does not display any of this information, so the user can focus on setting the map display via the top menu.

Once the user has customized the map to their liking, they can collapse the top menu and view the data displayed in the bottom of the screen (middle), such as Habitat Quality Factors and Climate data.

The user can also collapse both features to view only the map (right), and therefore maximize the screen space of the map.