Wildlife Photography Journal App
Budget: $750 – $1,500 USD
I'm seeking an experienced mobile app developer to create a wildlife photography scavenger hunt & journal app available on both iOS (required) and Android (preferred). Think Pokémon Go meets iNaturalist, designed for casual players who want a reason to go outside.
Core features include:
- User account creation and login
- Location based list of regional wildlife. This will be a scavenger hunt with a defined list of 151 animals per region which the user is challenged to photograph. I have already selected the animals for each region, but they need to be loaded in based on user location.
- Integration to the phone's camera to allow direct access to geotagged photography from within the app.
- **KEY FUNCTIONALITY** AI identification layer for animal recognition. Identification can be gamified a bit as it should only search for matches against the list of 151 specific animals within the user's region, and provide a selection based on the most likely animal from that subset. AI identification confidence should be on a sliding scale (e.g., 74% confidence, 89% confidence, etc.) with captures requiring a certain confidence threshold to be logged in the user's journal. High-confidence identifications quickly validate on a player’s screen and capture automatically to their journal, keeping the core loop fast and satisfying. Medium-confidence identifications surface a shortlist of suggestions from the regional set of 151, weighted by model probability. The player picks their best guess, and the submission goes to community verification with approval thresholds that scale inversely with AI confidence. The raw confidence scores are logged to a separate scientific database. This dual-track approach lets us tip the scales toward fun for players while preserving an unbiased dataset that can be licensed to academic researchers and conservation organizations.
- A freemium model with gated paid content, including an AI park ranger avatar who provides photography coaching; e.g., framing, lighting, and centering suggestions
- Journal entry creation pipeline and cloud storage for user photographs. I have already created the designs for the 'pre-capture' journal pages, but will need users' pictures to replace the initial artwork when a photograph with a confirmed animal ID is taken. The user can save up to 3 pictures for each animal on the list in their journal, which will be submitted for scoring. The user can continue to take pictures after they have their 3 confirmed captures, but will have to replace an existing picture if they want to submit a new one. Replaced pictures will go into the player's 'archived photo album', where they can store up to an additional 3 pictures of each animal.
- Photo uploading and sharing to a moderated community feed, with ability for other players to rate/like/comment on photos posted
- Player journal scores, based on the combined ratings of all of the confirmed captures within the user's journal
- Regional journal leaderboards
- Ability to add seasonal community events
- Gamification elements like player avatars, XP system, & cosmetics
- Location based heat map and realtime 'nearby wildlife' suggestions based on community captures
Ideal skills and experience:
- Proficiency in mobile app development for both iOS and Android. React Native or Flutter preferred
- Experience with AI integration, particularly in image recognition
- Strong UI/UX design skills to ensure a user-friendly interface
- Full-stack backend fluency. Comfortable standing up and maintaining cloud infrastructure (Firebase, AWS, GCP, or equivalent). Auth, storage, real-time data, API design
- Background in photography or related fields is a plus
Please share your portfolio and relevant experience.
Core features include:
- User account creation and login
- Location based list of regional wildlife. This will be a scavenger hunt with a defined list of 151 animals per region which the user is challenged to photograph. I have already selected the animals for each region, but they need to be loaded in based on user location.
- Integration to the phone's camera to allow direct access to geotagged photography from within the app.
- **KEY FUNCTIONALITY** AI identification layer for animal recognition. Identification can be gamified a bit as it should only search for matches against the list of 151 specific animals within the user's region, and provide a selection based on the most likely animal from that subset. AI identification confidence should be on a sliding scale (e.g., 74% confidence, 89% confidence, etc.) with captures requiring a certain confidence threshold to be logged in the user's journal. High-confidence identifications quickly validate on a player’s screen and capture automatically to their journal, keeping the core loop fast and satisfying. Medium-confidence identifications surface a shortlist of suggestions from the regional set of 151, weighted by model probability. The player picks their best guess, and the submission goes to community verification with approval thresholds that scale inversely with AI confidence. The raw confidence scores are logged to a separate scientific database. This dual-track approach lets us tip the scales toward fun for players while preserving an unbiased dataset that can be licensed to academic researchers and conservation organizations.
- A freemium model with gated paid content, including an AI park ranger avatar who provides photography coaching; e.g., framing, lighting, and centering suggestions
- Journal entry creation pipeline and cloud storage for user photographs. I have already created the designs for the 'pre-capture' journal pages, but will need users' pictures to replace the initial artwork when a photograph with a confirmed animal ID is taken. The user can save up to 3 pictures for each animal on the list in their journal, which will be submitted for scoring. The user can continue to take pictures after they have their 3 confirmed captures, but will have to replace an existing picture if they want to submit a new one. Replaced pictures will go into the player's 'archived photo album', where they can store up to an additional 3 pictures of each animal.
- Photo uploading and sharing to a moderated community feed, with ability for other players to rate/like/comment on photos posted
- Player journal scores, based on the combined ratings of all of the confirmed captures within the user's journal
- Regional journal leaderboards
- Ability to add seasonal community events
- Gamification elements like player avatars, XP system, & cosmetics
- Location based heat map and realtime 'nearby wildlife' suggestions based on community captures
Ideal skills and experience:
- Proficiency in mobile app development for both iOS and Android. React Native or Flutter preferred
- Experience with AI integration, particularly in image recognition
- Strong UI/UX design skills to ensure a user-friendly interface
- Full-stack backend fluency. Comfortable standing up and maintaining cloud infrastructure (Firebase, AWS, GCP, or equivalent). Auth, storage, real-time data, API design
- Background in photography or related fields is a plus
Please share your portfolio and relevant experience.