About Experience Sampler

Experience Sampler - The Details

The nitty gritty details about Experience Sampler

Experience Sampler is an open-source smartphone app compatible with both Android and iOS devices. It was designed using Apache Cordova™. Cordova is an open-source library of device application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable developers to use functions native to devices, such as the camera and local notification system, using web technologies, like HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript, instead of native code (Java for Android apps and Objective-C for iOS apps). Thus, Cordova allows apps to be developed for multiple platforms with minimal changes to the code. In fact, there is only one difference between the Experience Sampler code for Android OS and iOS!

To implement the features of Experience Sampler, we used various plugins created by Cordova: console, dialogs, splashscreen, vibration, and device. For the signaling system, we used the local-notifications plugin created by katzer. Experience Sampler also uses the jQuery Mobile web framework, which is a Javascript library that makes mobile apps more accessible for all smartphone and tablet devices, and mustache, a template system used to create a survey question templates.

Advantages

Low Operational Costs

Most of the things you need to use Experience Sampler are free!


Greater Control Over Data Collection

Every response is time stamped to the second. You can also lock participants out of the app.

No Cell Signal = No Problem

Experience Sampler does not require a constant cell signal to operate. You can beep participants even without a cell signal.

Minimize Selection Bias

Compatible with both Android and iOS devices, the two most popular mobile operating systems.

Open Source = Limitless Possibilities

Need a function or feature that is currently unavailable? You can create it yourself!

Easy to Customize

It's easy to customize Experience Sampler with your own questions and signalling schedule