2020 conference paper
Usability Testing and Experience Design in Citizen Science
Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication.
TL;DR:
Challenges and opportunities are outlined for usability and user experience technical communicators to explore issues of inclusive user experience design and the teaching of such as well as contribute to inclusive citizen science efforts.
(via Semantic Scholar)
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
10. Reduced Inequalities
(OpenAlex)
Source: ORCID
Added: November 21, 2023
Networked communication technologies have been deployed in efforts to engage citizens in scientific inquiry through mediated approaches. The use of digital networked technologies in the citizen science space, however, retains the same problems of usability and access that other digital experiences in terms of inclusion. A user experience research orientation to the problem of citizen science inclusivity may prove to be useful to public science projects seeking to engage with citizen-users traditionally marginalized from citizen science projects. This paper contributes to that scholarship by outlining the initial inquiries into the usability of an online citizen science project. First, the paper briefly situates the history of citizen science from a citizen/user perspective. Then the paper reviews the contemporary relationships between user experience and usability in the design of citizen science efforts. Next, the paper grounds that discussion in an experience report of the citizen science project including the project managers goals for inclusive participation. Following that discussion, the presenters ground their discussion in the findings of a usability test developed for a citizen science project, SciStarter, through a graduate course focused on usability for technical communicators. The role of SciStarter.org is to connect potential participants with projects of interest, and as such serves a crucial function to the overall success of SciStarter and the individual projects housed there. To assess how effective, efficient, and satisfying it is to use the SciStarter website, we report on a remote moderated usability test was conducted on the desktop version of the site. The testing took place over several days in October 2019 and featured sessions with five participants. The article concludes by outlining challenges and opportunities for usability and user experience technical communicators to explore issues of inclusive user experience design and the teaching of such as well as contribute to inclusive citizen science efforts.