Design
1. Create a new project
To start working with ClimMob, your first step is to create a new project. You can do this in two ways: either by going to the Project overview section and clicking Create a new project, or by navigating to All projects and selecting Add new project. In both cases, you will be asked to complete a short form with the main project details. Once created, you can always return later to update or adjust the project settings. To set up a profile for your tricot project.
Fields to fill:
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General information
● Project name: Unique and more descriptive name for the project. We recommend including the technology, the year or time, and the location, to distinguish the project from others, when you manage multiple projects. For example: Bean_Honduras_2019_season1
● Project ID: Short, unique identifier of the project. For example, your initials and year of the project: JV19.
● Description: Add more detail about the project.
● Keywords: To make your project searchable, enter up to X keywords that define your project. Examples: “bean”, “Honduras”.
● Trial coordinator: Your full name, start with your first name, all names separated by a space. By default, it is already filled with your data. Change if the trial coordinator is someone else.
● Email address: Your email address.
● Affiliation: Select one or create a new affiliation, if any of the options applies to your organization.
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Geographic information
● Select the country where the project will take place
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Participants
● Number of participants: Enter how many participants will join this project. For example: 200. If you don’t know the exact number yet, better choose a number too high than too low (but still reasonable, as otherwise ClimMob will do a lot of unnecessary computing later on).
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Technology options labels
● Number of technology options each participant compares: By default, this is set to ‘3’ and cannot be changed. It’s a reminder that in a tricot project, every participant will receive 3 technology options to compare.
● Name given to the 3 items that each participant compares: by default the names are “Option A, Option B and Option C” but the trial coordinator could decide to change them for something else that participants can relate to better, such as numbers, colors or shapes.
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Project type
● You can indicate whether the project is a training project. This means the project was created for educational purposes—such as practice, demonstrations, or coursework—and not intended for actual data collection in the field.
● There are three options for experimental site: on-farm testing, home, or public space (e.g., market). Depending on the experimental site selected, you will need to choose between different units of analysis and corresponding objectives (see examples in box below).
● Do you want to create your project from a template? Select if it applies to your project.
● Finally, you can select up to four languages in which the participant forms will be provided, allowing multilingual data collection as needed.
2. Assign field agents
In this section, you can add the field agents who will work on this particular project. Field agents are your extension workers in the field who will communicate with the participants and later collect all trial observations using the ODK Collect app.
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On the project overview section, click on Assign field agents.
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If the fields agents you want to work with are already on the left list, just select the ones you would like to work with in this project.
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If you would like to add new field agents, click on +add new field agent. This will redirect you to the library of field agents, where you can add the information about a new field agent.
*Note that the field password and username are necessary for ODK Collect.
Video tutorials
Add field agents to your library
Assigning field agents to your ClimMob project
Project Setup - Field agents and Technology options
3. Select technology options
In this section, you can specify the technology options you want to compare in your tricot experiment. We recommend you select a pool of 7 to 20 technology options.
For example, if you want to test which bean variety of a pool of 7 to 20 bean varieties is best adapted to the region you are running your tricot experiment in, you would add the names of all bean varieties here. If you want to include 7 bean varieties in the experiment, or 20, or anything in between, depends on the experiment you have in mind.
If you want to test which fertilizer regime of a pool of 10 to 20 different fertilizer regimes makes crops grow best, you would add the names of these 10 to 20 fertilizer regimes here.
How-to:
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On the project overview section click on green button, Select technology options.
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You will access the list of available technologies in the platform. If the technology you are interested in is there, just click on it and access the different options (e.g. varieties).
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If the technology you are interested in is not there, click on + add new technology. This action will redirect you to the library, where you can create new technologies.
Video tutorials
Assigning technology options to your ClimMob project
Project Setup - Field agents and Technology options
Filling the ClimMob library with new technologies (e.g. varieties) to test in the tricot trials:
4. Prepare participant registration form
In this section, you can add and manage the administrative questions that field agents will ask participants during registration at the start of the project. These questions are important for two main reasons:
● Administrative purposes: to keep a clear record of who is participating, where they live, and other key details that help organize and monitor the trial.
● Data analysis purposes: to allow deeper insights, for example, checking whether younger participants adopt a technology faster, or whether female participants show a preference for certain options. Once you have defined the list of questions, they will be available through the ODK Collect app. Field agents can then enter participant information directly into the app during registration.
How-to:
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On the project definition section, click Prepare participant registration form.
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Drag the questions you want to include from the left panel (available questions from the library) into the middle panel (assessment form). A preview of the selected questions will appear on the right panel (preview)—scroll down to see all of them.
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If the question you want is not available in the library, click Add new question and create it under the most relevant section.
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The ClimMob library already includes a list of commonly used questions, which you can easily add to the registration form.
Video tutorials
Learn in the following video how to prepare the participant registration form and set up the randomization for the ClimMob project.
Project setup - Registration form and Technology randomization
Learn how to add new questions to the library
Library - Add Project Questions
5. Prepare data collection form
In this section, you define the different data collection moments for the on-farm evaluation that participants will carry out. At each moment, specific questions will be asked to capture observations. It is important to decide:
● Which traits will be evaluated in the selected technology options?
● When will each trait be evaluated during the planting cycle?
Once set up, these data collection forms will guide field agents and participants during the evaluation process.
How-to:
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On the project definition section, click Prepare data collection. Here you can add the different data collection moments throughout the planting cycle.
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After adding the data collection moments, go to the right panel (Active data collection moments) and click Show to view them.
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For each data collection moment, drag the desired questions from the left panel (available questions from the library) into the middle panel (assessment form). A preview of the selected questions will appear on the right panel (preview)—scroll down to view all questions.
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If the question you need is not in the library, click Add new question and create it under the most relevant section.
Video tutorials
Learn more in detail about the process of preparing data collection in the following video: