Looking for examples of (streamlined) Munsell data entry

[archeomason]

Hello, everyone - 

I have struggled to find ways to streamline soil Munsell value data entry and was curious if anyone in the community had seen/used any particularly useful examples. (By "streamline" I'm referring to accurately recording a Munsell value in as few taps/key types as possible). 

It seems like an image-map-based question would be the key to minimizing taps. I've made a couple prototypes with this method (see below). There are so many soil Munsell book pages to work with that cramming them all onto one svg, makes the individual color values so tiny, they are tough to read and/or tap.  

Instead, I've fallen back to using the non-graphic radio buttons to select the values(see below), but that requires more taps and I don't have the coding chops to make sure that a user doesn't inadvertently enter a value that's incompatible with the soil books (e.g. "10YR 2.5/1" when there is no "2.5" value in the 10YR hue). 

I thought that maybe I could have several image-maps, one for each soil book page, that could be made visible depending on the hue selected. Then maybe have a text field that concatenates all of the pages' values together (e.g. ${RecordedMunsell}= ${25YMunsell}+${10YRMunsell}+${75YRMunsell}+etc.). Assuming that only one Munsell sheet graphic would be visible, the rest of the Munsell sheet values would be "", so it would just record the selected munsell sheet value. But maybe that's over-complicated.

I was just curious if anyone had dealt with this challenge (I'm sure I'm not the only one) in a different, more streamlined way. 

Thank you in advance!

[jcarlson · Accepted solution]

You could probably do this in Survey123 Connect. Instead of one big image map question, maybe have a select_one question that refers to the different pages, and then have each page as its own image map question. You can set it to only display the image map of the selected page.

To get this into a single field, you'd just need to pipe the selected image map choice to a hidden field that would hold the "real" value. Maybe just a series of nested coalesce statements?

[archeomason]

Thank you for the suggestion. Yes... That's pretty much the angle my brain was working toward. I'll give that a go and see if I'm successful!

Thank you for the suggestion!

[RobertBorchert]

Have you thought of trying to integrate an app like Color Assist to use your phone to determine the color. Takes out the guess work.

There are a number of Munsell color readers available.  

[archeomason]

Thank you for the suggestion. A couple of us here in the office have used Munsell color readers, but I'm more focused on using the graphical interface just to streamline the data entry. I'm not too focused on the actual color comparisons. Besides, different screens project slightly different coloration, so, in my opinion, they're unfortunately just as subjective. 

But I will check out Color Assist. I haven't tried that before. Thanks!

[RobertBorchert]

Color Assist reads the actual color and not a screen color.  I have had issues for years with colors on my screen looking different on someone else's.

I use color assist for other than GIS Applications to match up colors.  I used to to match the paint in a room.  When to home depot with the readings and they mixed an exact match.