MyShake: Using Human-Centered Design Methods to Promote Engagement in a Smartphone-Based Global Seismic Network

Abstract

MyShake is a global seismic platform that uses private citizens' smartphones to detect earthquakes and record both ground shaking and users' experiences. The goal is to reduce earthquake risk and provide users with a resource for earthquake science and information. It is powered by the participation of users, therefore, its success as a global network and its utility for the users themselves is reliant on their engagement and continued involvement. This paper discusses the citizen scientist participation that enables MyShake, with specific attention to the human-centered design process that was used to overhaul the mobile application's user interface. After the successful initial launch of the application in February of 2016, we had the opportunity to revisit the user interface based on user feedback and needs. The process began with an assessment of the user and geographic distribution of the original user base through surveys and Google Play Store analytics. Subsequently, through systematic examination of the motivations and needs of community members in the San Francisco Bay Area and iterative evaluations of design decisions, MyShake was redesigned to appeal as a resource to a wider range of users in earthquake-prone regions. The new user interface was then evaluated through interviews, surveys, and meetups with potential users. We highlight the human-centered methodology we employed, as well as the roadblocks we faced, in the hopes that our experience will be valuable to other citizen science projects in the future.

A Review of the Capacitive MEMS for Seismology

“…The potential outcomes coming from the bandwidth extension are huge, with immediate consequences in all the applications fields listed in the previous paragraphs. MEMS are considered the future innovation for country-scale networks in a 10-year outlook [131], focused not only to map the intensity distribution or to early warning systems, but also to proper seismological studies. Similarly, the great diffusion of smartphone equipped with MEMS and devoted apps will enable the development of human-centred, global-scale, seismic networks involving the participation of the citizens [132,133,134].…”

The MyShake Platform: A Global Vision for Earthquake Early Warning

“…We engaged with MyShake users to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points in order to identify what features could be added to the app to address these needs. A description of the entire design process can be found in Rochford et al (2018). Here we highlight some of the key learnings and how they have been mapped into the new MyShake2.0.…”

“…We identified four key insights that broadly represent how the public thinks and reacts to earthquakes based on interviews (Rochford et al 2018):…”

“…Based on the analysis of people's needs in an earthquake, and also on their reaction to participating in the MyShake project as citizen scientists, we Figure 6 Observed alert latency. This is the time from when the MyShake servers sent the alert until it was received by the phones Figure 7 Flow of actions taken by people in response to an earthquake derived from interviews with MyShake users and experts (Rochford et al 2018) Vol. 177, (2020 The MyShake Platform: A Global Vision for Earthquake Early Warning identified features that were of greatest value to users and were also technically feasible:…”

Earthquake Early Warning and Beyond

“…The whole system design is a collaboration between academia and industry, where seismologists at Berkeley Seismology Lab provided earthquake knowledge and designed the detection algorithms, while developers from Deutsche Telecom Silicone Valley Innovation Center implemented the whole system. An upgraded version of MyShake with new UIs and functionalities for both Android and iOS phones will be released in Spring 2019 to better engage participants and start issuing earthquake early warning to the public [20]. In this section, we give an overview of MyShake's current status and the overall system design.…”