Years of fieldwork were scattered across spreadsheets, notebooks and photo folders. Field Research Globe lets researchers and local partners around the world capture data on their phones, pools it in one shared project, and analyses it on an interactive globe: trends, links between sites, gaps in coverage, and reports ready to present.
No signal here. Your entry is safe and will upload on its own when you're back online.
The lead researcher has them for review. Once approved, they show up on everyone's globe and in the analysis.
The goal for a routine entry, timed from unlocking the phone.
Location, accuracy, time, device, weather and contributor.
Main actions sit within thumb reach at the bottom of the screen.
Offline-first. Sync is a background task, not a step you have to do.
Illustrative people and activity, to show how it works.
Create the project, the template, required fields and tags.
Lead researcherContributors capture entries on site, online or offline.
Field contributorsApprove or send back with a note. Possible duplicates and gaps are flagged.
ReviewersApproved entries join the shared dataset, keeping a record of who added what.
AutomaticThe globe, charts and insights update for the whole team.
EveryoneOwns the project, sets templates and permissions, and decides what's published.
Sees only their project and its template. Captures data fast and checks their own entries.
Checks quality and consent before data enters the analysis. Comments go straight to the contributor.
Explores, compares and exports approved data. Can't change the raw entries.
Orange = a gap flagged by the gap finder.
Up about 0.4 g/L a year on average since 2022, with the fastest rise in the Mekong. The data came from 2 contributors.
Vendor numbers fall the same way with distance from the centre. Shared tags: #urban #livelihood.
It's the biggest gap in coverage compared with the project's themes. A contributor in Almaty would close it.
Two pairs of entries are less than 200 m apart in Mumbai. They've been sent to the reviewer.
Questions in plain language, with answers based only on the project's approved entries. Every answer shows which entries it used.
Illustrative figures to show the analysis views.
Sample data for illustration. The real app holds full records: photos, measurements, documents, tags and annotation threads.
Measurements in spreadsheets, observations in notebooks, photos in folders. No single place held a site's whole story.
Tables hide geography. Patterns across regions, gaps and links between sites only show up on a map.
Every talk or report meant rebuilding slides by hand, and partners in the field had no shared place to add their data.
Plans the project, reviews entries and analyses them. Needs structure and trust in the data.
Collect data on site, often with no signal. Need speed, clear templates and one hand free.
Sees the work in a talk or report. Needs a story, not a dashboard.
Live search, two rows of filters (discipline and status), summary stats and data actions.
A Canvas-rendered sphere with true spherical projection, inertia drag, pinch and scroll zoom, and animated fly-to.
Slides in when you select a pin: photos, measurements, documents, tags and a timestamped annotation thread.
Shows nearby sites, a chronological timeline or a quick chart for whatever is currently in view.
Turns a measurement into 3D bars rising from each pin, so values can be compared at a glance.
Animated arcs connect sites that share research tags, so related work shows up across continents.
A slider with a play button that steps through fieldwork dates and shows the research growing year by year.
Bar or scatter charts across sites, for any metric and any category filter.
Two sites side by side with automatic insights: distance, time between visits, shared metrics and tag overlap.
A chronological diary of all fieldwork, grouped by year. The research told as a story.
Scores regions with little coverage compared with the current site distribution, so you can see where to research next.
A gentle warning when a new site lands within 200 km of an existing one, before it clutters the data.
One click hides the interface. The globe flies from site to site while a clean card tells the story, controlled with arrow keys like a slide deck.
The site list slides in from the left. Picking a site closes it and flies to the pin.
Pin details rise from the bottom and close with a swipe down. The globe stays visible above.
Twelve controls fold into a single floating button with labelled tools. It moves up when the sheet is open.
The web prototype is for analysis at a desk. In the field, the phone becomes the place where data is captured. These are the features I'm designing for the app version:
GPS adds the site in one tap, with coordinates, date and time filled in automatically.
Photos, voice notes and measurements are saved straight to the site record while you're still there.
Remote sites often have no signal. Everything works offline and syncs when you're back online.
What you capture on the phone appears on the desktop globe, ready for the analysis tools and export. See the capture flow ↑
| Web app | Mobile app | |
|---|---|---|
| Main job | Analyse, compare, present | Capture, browse, look up |
| Context | At a desk, large screen, keyboard | In the field, one hand, poor signal |
| Navigation | Three panels plus toolbar | Full-screen globe, drawer, bottom sheet, floating tool button |
| Input | Forms, CSV import, click to place | GPS pin, camera, voice, quick tags |
| Output | PDF report, CSV, share link, presentation mode | Share link, sync to desktop |
Audited my own research data: what's captured, where it lives, what gets lost.
Three types of research, three audiences, one rule: the map is the interface.
Flat map first, then a 3D globe with a clean, academic UI.
Data management, then layers, then analysis, each tested on real sites.
Mobile layout, then field capture and team collaboration as the app concept.
A world map with location points, filters by discipline and status, and a record for each site.
Canvas rendering, spherical projection, inertia rotation and fly-to.
Add-site form, click-to-place, CSV import, local saving.
Chart builder, compare, share links, presentation mode.
Spike layer, flow lines, field log, gap finder, annotations, duplicate check, PDF and CSV export.
Drawer, bottom sheet, floating tool button, touch gestures.
Offline capture flow, shared projects with review, automatic insights.
Space Grotesk: technical and geometric, made for data.
Inter: neutral and very readable at small sizes on dense panels.
Every list, chart and filter connects back to a place on the globe.
Pins first, details on selection, tools when you need them.
Works alone and offline. Teams sync only what they choose to share.
The same entry feeds the globe, the analysis, the report and the talk.
Mobile isn't a smaller desktop. In the field people capture; at a desk they analyse.
Data quality starts with the capture flow. Templates and on-the-spot checks beat cleaning data later.
Fast iterations made design decisions more important. Every version needed a clear “why”.
Happy to walk you through the live prototype and the design decisions behind it.