✨Avicenna April Update: Beautiful

Hey Avicenna Community,

It's APRIL (Avicenna's Productivity Reaches Impressive Levels). See for yourself below—how colorful it is! I can't express enough gratitude to my incredible colleagues for making this possible.

And that's not all. We finalized some other features, like a new version of App Usage and the challenging Garmin Health SDK, which are now going through their final testing phase.

Here's the list of what we've achieved this beautiful April.

🚀 New Features

• Geofencing Triggering Logic
  We introduced Geofencing triggering logic to trigger activities based on the participant locations using GPS data. This triggering logic acts when participants enter, stay within, or exit specific geofences. For detailed configuration options and setup, please visit our Learn website.
• Hexoskin Integration
  We introduced the integration of Hexoskin’s advanced biometric shirts with Avicenna, allowing researchers to monitor and analyze detailed cardiorespiratory, activity, and sleep data. For more details, visit our Learn website.
• Web Activity Tracking
  We introduced Web Activity Tracking as a new data source for Android, capturing participant web browsing activity through a specialized Firefox Nightly Mobile plugin. This feature helps analyze website types visited, browsing frequency, and web usage patterns. For more details, visit our Learn website.

🌟 Improvements

• Portuguese Language
  We added Portuguese to our list of languages (15 now) that you can use in the participant app and study setup for multilingual studies. Check out more info here.
• Skipping Zero-Step Pedometer Data
  To reduce unnecessary load on the app and system, we’ve improved the Pedometer data source in the Android app, with plans to extend to iOS, by skipping records with zero steps.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• Auto-Correction in Number Questions’ Input
  We fixed an issue in the participant web app where invalid number inputs for number-based survey questions were automatically corrected based on the minimum and maximum allowed values instead of preventing progression and displaying an error message.
• Preservation of Survey Responses When Navigating Back
  We resolved an issue on the participant web app where survey responses were not preserved if a participant navigated back to a previous question and returned. Now, responses are retained unless the survey flow changes.
• Sorting by Participant Type on the Pending Invitations Page
  We fixed an issue in the researcher dashboard where sorting by participant type did not work on the Pending Invitations page.
• Incorrect List of Activities on the Activity Editor
  We fixed an issue in the activity editor where some additional, non-editable activity types were incorrectly displayed on the top blue drawer.
• Pedometer Data Returning Zero
  We resolved an issue on the participant Android app where the Pedometer data source returned 0 for all steps collected, and the number of records was fewer than expected. This was traced back to changes starting in Android 10, requiring explicit user permission for “Activity Recognition” to access step counter data.
• Study Setup on the Participant App
  We fixed a rare issue on the participant Android app where taking care of the incomplete study-setup steps, such as granting sensor access, could cause the app to crash.
• Unsupported Question Layouts for Image Answers
  We fixed an issue on the participant web app where image answers were incorrectly displayed for single-answer and multiple-answer questions with “Dropdown” or “Button” display layouts. The fix ensures that image answers are not shown for these display layouts in the first place (since they don’t result in a good user experience).
• Image Answer Type for Multiple-Answer Questions
  We resolved an issue in the survey editor where researchers were unable to set the answer type to “Image” for multiple-answer questions since the option wasn’t there.
• Stroop Freezing
  We fixed an issue where the Stroop test would freeze and subsequently crash on the participant iOS app, particularly when texts for neutral rounds were included. The problem stemmed from special character handling.
• Save and Submit Buttons While Editing the Survey Responses
  We resolved an issue on the researcher dashboard where the Save and Submit buttons were non-functional while editing the survey responses.
• Missing Whoop Recovery Data
  We fixed an issue where Whoop Recovery data was missing in Kibana, even as Sleep and Workout data were available. We’ve recovered the missing data records. As part of this, we added a new sleep_id field to assist researchers in correlating Recovery data with the corresponding Sleep data.

🔍 Reflecting on the Impact

Your experience with Avicenna is crucial to our growth. Each update aims to streamline your research, focusing on usability and efficiency. We strive to support your research effectively.

📣 We Value Your Feedback – And Your Stories

Have the updates improved your research? We encourage sharing your experiences on our Community Forum or via email. Your feedback helps shape our future updates and motivates the Avicenna community.

⭐ What's Next?

We remain dedicated to improving Avicenna. New features and improvements are in the pipeline, aiming to further enhance your research workflow. To name a few, we're working on:

• Reset Participation: As a next step to the Test Participants feature we introduced before, test participants will be able to reset their participation and start as new participants in the study right within the app.
• Apple's HealthKit: Leverage the HealthKit platform to incorporate diverse health data from iOS devices, making your research even more comprehensive.
• Automated Testing for the Participant Web App: We are working towards achieving complete (or near complete) automation in testing the participant web app.
• Carry Forward Choices: Enhance your survey experience by automatically using chosen or unchosen responses from previous single-answer or multi-answer questions to customize and tailor subsequent questions.
• And more: Stay tuned for additional features and improvements as we continue our mission to optimize your research experience.

Avicenna is getting even better, and we're excited to reveal all the improvements to you.

Let's keep pushing the boundaries of research together.