Labvanced's H2'22 Release Notes: Technology updates
In case you missed the newsletter we published, these are the updates for our app! Learn all about the new features, improvements, and fixes (as well as upcoming updates we have set in the horizon) that are happening in the Labvanced app!
The New Public Experiment Library is Now Live!
Have you tried out our new public experiment library? We have redesigned the library, making it easier to search through published studies, templates, and demos.
The library is now a table, so you can filter and search and sort according to your needs, you just clicked the green ‘ADVANCED SEARCH’ button in the upper left corner.
You will see various fields and options for sorting the library, such as: Study Name or ID, Author Name, and Affiliation (university). You can also select whether you want the displayed studies to include Eye Tracking or specify whether it’s Multi-User or under which Category/Branch of psychology it falls under.
Now, you can copy the URL of your query and share it with others
Example 1: Studies using Eye Tracking and have a ‘category’ of Developmental & Educational Psychology
Example 2: Studies with the ‘affiliation’ of Carnegie
Example 3: Studies using Eye Tracking and have a ‘keyword’ of Attention This is great because it promotes collaboration between people and also helps universities share their published studies.
Soft Delete Provision for One Month
Now, when users want to delete their data from their servers, we have a soft delete provision where it takes one month automatically to be deleted permanently. This window is like a safety net that allows you to change your mind or if there was a mistake.
For example, if the user somehow deleted the recording data either by enabling/disabling the recording or through the DataExport page, now it is possible to restore it. To restore it, you just send a request ticket to the Labvanced support team and a Labvanced administrator can restore it. But, this must happen before a full month passes from the date the deletion occurred.
Range Element
The range element in the app editor now has additional options for customizations, including:
- Hiding the range element handles
- Making the range element required, so that the user MUST interact with it, or the experiment does not progress.
Elements' Visibility in the Editor
Another feature we have added has to do with editor visibility and locking. Now, elements can be locked in a particular position in the editor and any movement or clicking on it will not have an effect as long as it is locked. Also, the elements’ visibility can now be toggled.
Sending a Final Reminder Email to Participants
For longitudinal studies, participants are expected to perform an experiment and/or complete questionnaires at multiple points. Thus, we offer an automatic way to email participants reminders. Before this improvement, we were sending 2 emails per session, now we send out 3 emails and have already seen a reduction in attrition rates as a result with the third email being sent out a few hours before the closing time of the session.
Preventing Deletion of Groups, Sessions, and Blocks
We have removed the deleting mechanism of Sessions, Groups, Blocks in the study editor page, but only if the recording is already and the study is live. This prevents crashes and unexpected user results.
Before this improvement, users could have 2 groups and data would be recorded for each group and would delete a group while leaving the experiment on ‘data recording active.’ However, when you delete a group (or session or block), a mismatch is created between the existing data and the deleted session / group / block.
Now that the deleting mechanism is gone, if you want to change the experimental design (by removing sessions/groups/blocks) you have two options:
Secure data locally by downloading it and then delete the data in the Labvanced app after you have your copy. Then, go back to the editing more in the same study and change the experimental design accordingly.
Alternatively, you can create a new draft from the study by copying the original study, creating a new study and then update the experimental design (by removing the session/group/block) in the copy.
Unexpected Behaviour of Trial and Frame Timestamp
When creating an experiment and adding a variable, sometimes users forget to uncheck the 'Reset trial variable' option under the variable properties section. This leads to some unexpected NaN values in timestamps. To avoid this, we have added an alert message while creating the event.
Sometimes a trial variable will need to be reset at the beginning of a new trial. In other cases, it is important to have the same trial variable across the experiment. For example, you might want to access a variable from a task earlier (using the age from a questionnaire at a previous trial and then accessing it at a later point in a different trial).
Auto Enabling of Survey Data Variables in DataExport Page
In the new DataExport page, the survey data variables (such as: Gender, Age, Language, Country etc.) will automatically be part of the export page if any data is recorded in any of them or enabled by the study owner. Previously it was the manual process to enable each of these variables from the variables page.
Optimized Functionality of DataExport Page
In addition to the above, we fixed an issue with download requests from the DataExport page. Some users were experiencing it crashing and this was because there was an unnecessary call to the server being performed in the background, taking extra time to request the time. We fixed this issue and reduced the amount of serving time for download requests.
The following new features and improvements are currently in progress and our team is working hard to complete them:
New Home Page: We are designing a new website. It will have a modern look and feel as well as more content and helpful information for our users.
Dashboard Revamp: We are also working on a new design of the app dashboard when you login which will be more intuitive and more actionable with advanced information and features.
Cross Session Data Access: With this feature, it will be possible for participants to access data produced by another participant. This will allow for the comparison of a subject’s performance to the general population and distribution of performance of all former subjects. Another scenario of this feature would be to access past data in a longitudinal study for the same subject, enabling for the tracking of individual performance changes across sessions.