Understanding Interaction Design Challenges in Mobile Extreme Citizen Science

Abstract

Extreme citizen science is a bottom up practice used to empower people by supporting them, via processes and technological tools, to find solutions for local problems, but also to tackle major sustainability challenges of the 21 st century. Methods and tools based on mobile computing have been utilized by communities in various parts of the world, from the Congo Basin through the Amazonian rain forest. However, extreme citizen science initiatives often face severe challenges as predesigned technological solutions prove to be non-transferable to peculiar environments of rural developing regions. In this paper we collect and investigate evidence from the implementation of various extreme citizen science initiatives in the developing world. Our aim is to identify key obstacles towards their successful realization, mainly focusing on the problem of user interaction with mobile computing solutions. We conduct interviews with nine experienced researchers who all performed extensive fieldwork within these initiatives, and who reflect on the technology interaction, knowledge organization, inter-cultural, social and usability issues. Based on our analysis we report among others, symptomatic difficulties with abstractions, representational hierarchies, and navigation commands, as well as potential improvements that mobile technology developers can implement in order to create a more inclusive environment for extreme citizen science.

Experiences from Extreme Citizen Science: Using Smartphone-based Data Collection Tools with Low-literate People

“…The consent is free and informed highlighting the ability of communities to refuse an intervention and it takes place prior to them being affected by external actions [12]. This process further sets the foundations for local capacity building [12,16]. Researchers and local communities work towards establishing a community protocol to define project's processes: e.g., responsibilities and types of data to be collected and analysed, maintaining technical equipment, incentives, data ownership, identification and agreement of short and long-term benefits for the community.…”

“…When iconic interfaces are used, icon design should be fully embedded in local cultural contexts and meanings [8,15,6] and user preferences [8]. Evidence suggests that low-literate users understand better hand-drawn, semiabstract graphics which incorporate action cues [15], although, this clearly depends on other factors such as local traditions, exposure to other forms of digital representations and symbolic literacies [16].…”

“…Research around design issues in citizen science is still at an infant stage [17] and for extreme citizen science it remains mostly anecdotal evidence [16]. Several of the previous underlying principles, findings and research challenges, have provided the theoretical foundations for the development of the extreme citizen science tools: Sapelli and Tap&Map.…”

Citizen Science Platforms

“…The main challenge for citizen science platforms lies in their usability and design (Giuliana 2017;Leeuwis et al 2018;Skarlatidou et al 2019;Pejovic and Skarlatidou 2020). They need to work smoothly and look modern.…”

Sensing and making sense of tourism flows and urban data to foster sustainability awareness: a real-world experience

“…Several projects engaged citizens equipped with smart devices, exploiting the build-in sensors and creating a participatory sensing network [ 76 , 77 ]. An interesting study that investigates the sensing of environmental conditions using common smart devices, focusing on noise and sound monitoring, is presented in [ 64 ].…”