A User-Journey in Citizen Science Apps

Wednesday, 05 August 2020 19:38

For Citizen Science projects, it is essential to understand the needs of the user and how to design interactive products and apps to guarantee good usability – which is highly involving. Researching and observing should be an experience with added value. Therefore User Journeys are often used in the progress of developing a new Application. 

The term "user journey" is part of the "user-centred-design" and wants do understand the "user's goal", their motivations and current pain points. These questions serve as the base for visualizing user requirements and help in terms of interface design for your specific application. Because first of all, a well-designed Citizen Science App should be easy-to-use and give positive feedback to the users - while they contribute to a better understanding of our world and improve scientific data-quality. 

The following motivation- and community-features have positive affects on the User-Experience and help to increase the scope, as well as the quality of the entire project:

 

1. How-to Citizen Science

The app-intro is an introductory welcome message for all citizen science beginners. It's the first step of the whole user-experience and explains the handling of the Citizen Science Smartphone App. The start of a discovery-journey. In the case you want to foreground an aspect of your research project, we will gladly implement individually designed Intro-Slides – for a lasting first impression. 

 

 

2. Enter a dialogue with the user

The centrepiece of the SPOTTERON Citizen Science Apps is the App-Spot-Dialog. Visually matching your project, it leads the user to their first spot – their first scientific observation. The dialogue is hierarchically structured and consists of different types of selection-fields. Icon- and picture-based buttons enhance the usability and help display complex data in a simplified way. For every Citizen Science Project, we conceptualize the Add-Spot-Dialog in collaboration with our partners.

More about spots & observations

 

3. Motivate

A successful Citizen Science Project lives from the long-term motivation of the users. To reward them on their expedition, all Apps on the SPOTTERON Platform include features, such as badges, user-ranking and spot-collection. 

 More about the User-Motivation-Pack

 

4. Social-Community-Building

What would a Citizen Science App be without an active community? In the end, the citizen scientist wants to share discoveries, follow other people's observations and be part of a vibrant community. We developed a range of Community-Features, which are included in all SPOTTERON Citizen Science Apps. We are continually developing new features in collaboration with our partners to improve the user's experience and to provide them for every running project on the SPOTTERON Platform. 

 More about the Community-Pack

 

We're here to help.

User-Journeys and User-Experience are practical analysis- and design-tools to determine the vision of your research-project and ease the entrance into the world of Citizen Science. Here at SPOTTERON we are happy to assist you. Contact us here! 

Projects & Apps open for Co-Use on SPOTTERON

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Social initiative Data Collection App
SPOTTERON

ArtSpots is a community-built art atlas. Through the App, people interested in various art forms like street art, historical or contemporary art, photography, architecture, and more can put their art observations on the map and discover art spots in their city or while travelling. The art community in the App allows exchanging with other like-minded people and contributing to a worldwide art collection.
Learn more about
ArtSpots
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Horizon Europe Citizen Science App

With the COSEA App, Citizen Scientists can observe marine environments, document coastal habitats or species, and report on pollution, infrastructure and the blue economy. Their contributions on the map and activity in the app will help scientists better understand the impacts and drivers of marine factors to protect and foster a healthy relationship between humans and seas.

Learn more about
COSEA | Collaboration for Effective Sea Action
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Environmental Citizen Science, Data Collection App
SPOTTERON

NatureSpots is a non-commercial and free project to discover nature together. In the app, nature photos and sightings of animals, plants or mushrooms can be shared with the community on the map. The app is a new initiative for observing nature and taking part is very simple and straightforward. The app is free of advertising, does not track users and takes digital privacy seriously.

Learn more about
NatureSpots
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Social initiative Community Engagement App
SPOTTERON

The new citizen participation uses "Citizen Science" in their hometown and nationwide to get User's feedback on places. As a result, citizens are empowered to become active in a city worth living in to collect and share data themselves and to interact with scientists. This enables them to recognize the consequences of sealing, heat, water shortages, and a lack of biodiversity, and generally, how places in their own environment affect us all.

Learn more about
CIVO Citizen Voice
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Horizon 2020 Invasive Species Monitoring App

The IPM-Popillia Horizon 2020 project aims to address the challenge of a new risk to plant health in Europe's agriculture and food safety: the invasion of the Japanese Beetle, Popillia japonica. This invasive species was introduced accidentally to mainland Europe in 2014 and can quickly spread by transportation and trade. As a species with a wide range of feeding plants, P. japonica threatens the entire agricultural sector, urban landscapes, and biodiversity in invaded areas.

Learn more about
IPM Popillia | Integrated Pest Management of the Japanese Beetle
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Environmental Community Engagement App

Fridays for Future see itself as a horizontal, grassroots grassroots movement that acts apolitically and refers to science for the facts. To engage the global population more, this app was developed using SPOTTERON. The aim is to find out how the population perceives the climate crisis and which positive and negative emotions are associated with specific topics related to biodiversity and climate crisis.

Learn more about
FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE - Climate App

Are you interested in co-using existing Apps? Get in Contact!

Get in contact for co-use here

 

 

Short News

  • New study from BiciZen project: "BiciZen: Lessons in the Development of a Crowdsourcing Mobile App to Make Cities More Bikeable" published in Journal of Participatory Research Methods. More studies available under the publication page here.

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  • Roadkill project has made wonderful short videos for the citizen scientists! The videos include the Roadkill App functions regarding how to confirm & comment on the spots and how to best take the photos for the project. The videos (in German) are available in the "Österreich forscht" blog here. 

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