On February 4th 2021, the book “Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind”, edited by Dr Artemis Skarlatidou and Professor Muki Haklay, was published Open Access by UCL Press.
You can view or download the book here. For individual chapters, you may use the JSTOR links here.
A few details about the book
‘Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind’ 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 the development of applications which eliminate usability barriers and can be used by everyone. In the first part, four chapters provide the theoretical and technological foundations for geographic citizen science and provide an in-depth overview of HCI and anthropological principles and methods. In the second and third parts, through a careful selection of 12 case studies from the Global North (second part) and South (third part), the book provides insights into the design and interaction barriers and the lessons learned from the engagement of a very diverse set of participants with geographic citizen science applications. 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 insights to inform technological innovation and future research in this area.
The book, which is dedicated to the memory of our beloved colleague and friend Gill Conquest, was inspired by the Workshop “Lessons learned from Volunteers’ Interactions with Geographic Citizen Science” which took place on 27thApril 2018 at University College London, organised and run by the Extreme Citizen Science group (more information here). This was the first ever workshop organised to discuss and share experiences from the field with particular emphasis on how people interact with citizen science applications, usability barriers and how these can be addressed. The event was attended by over 50 people with participants from all over Europe, Africa, Brazil and Canada.
It includes a foreword by Professor Jenny Preece (Citizen Science: Theory and Practice Editor-in-Chief; Professor and Dean Emerita, University of Maryland Information School).
Book Launch Event Details
We invite you to join the book launch event on Tuesday 23rdMarch, which will take place online from 5-6 pm (GMT) and includes a keynote by Susanne Hecker, Chair of the European Citizen Science Association.
To register please use the Zoom link https://ucl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqcuippzMjEtFrWO6h30PGj-AHwv-r83IYwhich also includes an agenda for the evening. There will also be talks by the authors and other citizen science project leaders, and a Q&A session. After you register you will receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the meeting.
What is coming next?
With“Geographic Citizen Science Design”,our vision was to improve awareness and encourage citizen science practitioners to reflect and discuss how to better design geographic citizen science projects and their applications, eliminating interaction barriers introduced by geographical, environmental and other contextual characteristics, so that “No one is left behind”.
In the first month after being published, the book has received over 1,650 downloads in 89 countries. This clearly shows a growing interest in the topic. We recognise that there are many more anecdotal experiences and lessons learned yet to be shared. We therefore want to extend this conversation by enabling more academics, practitioners and volunteers to reflect and share their experiences, helping to broaden the debate of how (geographic) citizen science projects and their technologies should be designed and used in the future to be more inclusive, easier to use, aligned with user needs in specific contexts of use and hence more empowering for their local communities and for the individual volunteers. For this purpose, we are organising a series of blog posts on the Extreme Citizen Science blog. If you would like to share your experience or insights with us to feature in one of the future blog posts please email Artemis Skarlatidou (a.skarlatidou@ucl.ac.uk) or Alice Sheppard (a.sheppard@ucl.ac.uk). Alternatively, share your story on Twitter and use hashtags #CitSciExperiences #TechDesign4CS.
Extreme Citizen Science blog 