Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind

Artemis Skarlatidou · Muki Haklay

Feb 2021 · UCL Press

About this ebook

Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications to support citizen involvement is massive; every citizen has an opportunity to become a scientist and contribute to a scientific discipline, without having any professional qualifications. With geographic interfaces being the common approach to support collection, analysis and dissemination of data contributed by participants, ‘geographic citizen science’ is being approached from different angles.

Geographic Citizen Science Design takes an anthropological and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) stance to provide the theoretical and methodological foundations to support the design, development and evaluation of citizen science projects and their user-friendly applications. Through a careful selection of case studies in the urban and non-urban contexts of the Global North and South, the chapters provide insights into the design and interaction barriers, as well as on the lessons learned from the engagement of a diverse set of participants; for example, literate and non-literate people with a range of technical skills, and with different cultural backgrounds.

Looking at the field through the lenses of specific case studies, the book captures the current state of the art in research and development of geographic citizen science and provides critical insight to inform technological innovation and future research in this area.

About the author

Artemis Skarlatidou is Senior Research Associate in the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) group at UCL. Her research interests include Risk Communication, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience aspects (e.g. usability, aesthetics, trust) of citizen science applications, geospatial technologies and their spatial representations for expert and public use.

Muki Haklay is Professor of Geographic Information Science at UCL. His research interests include public access, use, and creation of environmental information; interaction with geographical technologies; participatory mapping; and citizen science. He is the co-director of UCL Extreme Citizen Science group (ExCiteS) and co-founder of the social enterprise Mapping for Change.