We just released a new (minor) version of the ESMira web interface. Note that your administrator first needs to update your instance to this new version (3.4.2) for you to see these changes on your server. This update was mostly focused on usability improvements in the admin interface.

Highlights

Translations

A new Polish translation has been included. The previously added AI-generated Hindi translation has been checked and edited by human native speakers.

Note for Translators

We did slightly rework the app participation instructions, in order to make it clearer that downloading ESMira is only the first of two necessary steps to enter a study. This addresses the problem of some participants entering publicly available studies on our server (which is listed as the default in the server list in the application), instead of the study they should enter. We plan to also add more visible hints in the application itself at some point.

This change necessitated the change of some texts used to build the automatically generated application installation instruction page. This means that right now, only the English and German versions of that page are complete. Please be aware that if you want to use this page in any other of the languages that ESMira offers, these translations need to be updated. Please contact us if you want to contribute to the translation.

Usability Improvements

We worked on some usability improvements. Wherever possible numeric fields are now restricted to prevent the entry of invalid settings. This should help with the stability of studies. We also tried to clarify the usage of links on the publish page, by providing explanations, clearer headings, and links to explanatory wiki pages.

Where it is not useful to restrict settings, we tried to add warnings. We added warnings in the following places:

  • Text fields requiring a certain format (e.g., and email field) shows a warning if the format does not match.
  • The publish page will show a warning if an access key is already used by another study on the same server, including information on the resulting behavior.
  • Certain configuration of randomized signal times will show warnings. Most notably, a warning if the minimum interval between signals is too high for multiple signals in an interval. This already would cause an error in the application, but was hard to identify. Additionally, if the end time of an interval is before the start time, ESMira can interpret this as an interval spanning over midnight. A warning / hint appears in such a configuration making users aware of this.

FAQ field in Study Description

It can be useful to provide participants with some information, without frontloading that information at the start of the study, and thereby overwhelming participants. We previously addressed with this by employing a Frequently Asked Questions section. We did this by creating a questionnaire by that name that consisted of only text display items. However, the cleaner solution is to give this section its own button. Which we now did.

ARM64 Docker Image

Thanks to a contribution by Jakub Jędrusiak, the docker image is now compatible with ARM64. This makes it even easier to employ ESMira on hardware like the Raspberry Pi.