Bird Watcher

The brief

Birding happens in cold fields, gloves on, with seconds to act. Bird Watcher logs sightings fast and helps you identify what you saw.

A personal project. I designed, built and field-tested every part of it.

The app, up close

A field guide to British birds and a life list of the ones you’ve seen, in one app.

What was in the way

Field testing, quite literally, shaped the priorities:

• Logging a sighting in other apps took longer than the sighting itself, so the moment was gone before the app caught up.
• Identification help was buried behind menus, when the whole point was needing it instantly, gloves on, bird already flying off.
• A lifetime of sightings added up to a list in every app I tried, not something that felt like progress.

How we got there

1. 01

   The fast log

   Species, location and count, captured on one screen with one thumb, designed with gloves on in mind rather than a bare hand on a desk.

2. 02

   Identification at hand

   A visual species library searchable by size, colour and habitat, so identifying a bird doesn’t mean guessing its name first.

3. 03

   Progress you can see

   Sightings shown as dots filling in against the full species list, not a growing table nobody wants to scroll.

4. 04

   Built and field-tested by the person using it

   Every part designed, built and tried out in the field myself, birding trip by birding trip, rather than guessed at from a desk.

What shipped

An app built for the exact conditions it gets used in: cold, gloved, a few seconds to act before the bird moves on.

A personal project, designed, built and field-tested by me, end to end.