User survey: the results
A few weeks ago we asked you to fill in a short survey to help us understand more about how you’re using the Encounter app, and what we can do to improve. Here’s what we learned:
Nearly 300 of you filled in our survey: if you were one of them, thank you so much. The majority of respondents – 87% – said they live in England, with just over half saying they were in a rural or semi-rural setting. Forty per cent have been using the app for over six months – thank you to all our early adopters!
Nearly 73% of respondents use the app once a week or more, with 36% using it several times a week and 2.8% using it several times a day. We update the information in the app at least twice a day, sometimes more, so it’s definitely worth checking back in as part of your everyday routine.
When it comes to writing in your journals, it’s a mixed picture with 5% doing so every day, 17% several times a week, 13% once every couple of weeks, and 34% saying they haven’t yet. We designed Encounter to be used in whatever way works for you, and there’s no obligation to use your private journal at all. However, research shows that jotting down the good things you experience in nature has a powerful, and lasting effect on nature connectedness, and people with higher nature connectedness scores tend to be happier, healthier and take part in more pro-nature behaviours. If you haven’t yet used your private journal, we’d love you to give it a go. If you prefer, you can use it to store photos of nature instead of, or as well as, your notes. Whatever works for you.
We asked about the effect Encounter was having on our users’ lives. 68% agreed or agreed strongly that it had improved their connection to nature, 49% said it had improved their wellbeing and 69% said they knew more about nature since starting to use the app. Additionally, 13% of respondents said they were getting outside more often, and about the same number said they were doing more for nature since starting to use the app. We are absolutely over the moon to hear this; it’s exactly why we created Encounter, and learning that it’s working has given us the boost we needed to keep working hard and making improvements. Thank you.
Your favourite part of the app, by a long chalk, was the daily tips and inspiration in the Inspire Me feed, followed by the longer reads in Learn More. Sixty per cent of you wanted to see more localised nature content, which is also at the very top of our wishlist. We’re working on it!
A notable minority of you wanted to add video and audio clips to your journal, and we hope to offer this in the near future. Forty-seven per cent were keen on the ability to map walks and 21% wanted to use Encounter via their computers; these are both more complex pieces of work, but ones we would very much like to enter into with a partner organisation. Watch this space.
Looking at the comments you left us at the end of the survey, we were reassured to learn that most of you enjoy the fact that it isn’t a ‘social’ app, with Likes and Follows – though one person did ask how to see other users (sorry if that was you – that’s not the direction we plan to take things!) A couple of people didn’t seem sure how to use the filters to customise their home page, and that might be something we need to explain a bit better. In short, if you tap the icon with three little sliders on it, at the top, you can ‘switch on’ or ‘switch off’ your journal, Inspire Me, Learn More and your bookmarks, so that what appears in your feed is only what you want to see.
Finally, you gave us some excellent suggestions for improvements, from tapping to enlarge photos in the Inspire Me and Learn More feeds to exporting your journals in printable form. And you let us know what you loved about it, too: “The manner in which it's quite an 'offline' app is lovely – keep that side of it up!” and “It’s brilliant – it has reignited my childhood love of nature”.
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to help us improve – it really is much appreciated.
If you’d like to fill in our user survey, you can still do so by going here.
