Book: Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind

Geographic Citizen Science Design: No one left behind

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Photo by CA15212

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: Link. For individual chapters, you may use the JSTOR links.

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 27th April 2018 at University College London, organised and run by the Extreme Citizen Science group (more information here) and funded by the COST Action CA15212. 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). 

Funding Acknowledgement

The development of this book was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project Extreme Citizen Science: Analysis and Visualisation (Grant Agreement No 694767) and the COST Action CA15212, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).