Hi all,

The UCL Extreme Citizen Science group is organising a workshop on lessons learned from volunteers’ interactions with geographic citizen science applications, 27 April 2018, London. The announcement is at https://uclexcites.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/workshop-on-lessons-learned-from-volunteers-interactions-with-geographic-citizen-science-applications-27-april-2018-london/ . Here are the main points:

The goal of this workshop is to initiate discussions by collecting and sharing academic and industrial expertise from various contexts, with the ultimate aim to understand how to produce better designs which improve efficiency and provide an improved user experience in and with geographic citizen science. The workshop is organised by the internationally-renowned Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) group at UCL and the EU-funded COST Action on citizen science to promote creativity, scientific literacy and innovation throughout Europe, in collaboration with ISPRS WG V/3 on the Promotion of Regional Collaboration in Citizen science and Geospatial Technology and the ICA Commission on Use, User and Usability Issues. Expected outcomes include a collection of the presented case studies in a book and a network to inspire and work on future collaboration opportunities.

If you would like to share your expertise (and contribute to our envisaged outputs) during the workshop we are pleased to invite you to submit one-page motivation letter which includes a description of yourself and your potential contribution to the workshop. If you are interested in presenting your work, we also invite you to submit an extended abstract (max 1500 words) describing your work and its related case study(ies).

Some indicative questions that submissions should address include (but not limited to):

• What are the characteristics of the proposed technology/application and why it is a geographic citizen science application?
• What was the design and development process and how were volunteers involved in it (if at all)?
• Who were the volunteers and what were their special characteristics which influence design?
• How did volunteers interact with the technology and what were the main barriers as well as most liked features?
• Did volunteers have specific needs from the technology that were not accommodated and how can we integrate these into better designs?
• What are the lessons learned and your design recommendations?

General criteria for selection

• Authors whose extended abstracts are accepted for presentation will be fully compensated for their travel and participation.
• Additional participants will be selected based on interest in the project, spaces available, geographical spread, career stage and gender balance. Participation of social enterprises, SMEs and other business is strongly encouraged.