This project will design new models of social participation and volunteerism through mobile device platforms, with a focus on citizen science. Micro-volunteerism is a newly emerging design territory for volunteering on the order of seconds or minutes. This research will develop a flexible new framework for citizen science based mobile tools to study this novel and largely unexplored social model of citizen participation and volunteerism. Through a series of research studies and design interventions, it will explore challenges and opportunities for leveraging this crowd sourced just-in-time volunteering social participation framework.
These efforts contribute toward a series of open research themes in the field of citizen science such as: a subscription based model for campaigns, flexible sensor and data collection techniques that adapt to context, diverse sensing strategies, models for participatory sensing and participatory analysis, and citizen data debate mechanisms. Also studied will be the effect of novel contribution models, badges and rewards, narrative and storytelling, and other methods for improving participation, contribution, motivation, and usage. The research is designed to allow citizens to easily develop and deploy citizen science based mobile collaborative campaigns, often leveraging low-cost sensing and ubiquitous technologies to facilitate real, positive environmental change.
The everyday world can become a living laboratory where citizens play a new and active role in facilitating scientific research aimed at exposing the dynamic interactions between people and the natural ecosystems and improving overall human health and well being. This research departs from typical sampling and collection techniques, and hypothesizes that while traditional scientific methods and models play a vital role in understanding the complex dynamics of our world, everyday non-expert citizens with sensor equipped mobile phones have the potential to expand the model of how scientific research is conducted. This approach also stands counter to traditional "smart computing" strategies, and instead develops a vocabulary of technologies and experiences to promote human curiosity that serves to scaffold individuals and communities towards a new understanding of our world. Citizen science is also positioned to synergize a new cooperative and collaborative approach to problem solving across a variety of expert practitioners such as computer scientists, engineers, social scientists, atmospheric chemists, environmental health organizations, urban planners, local and national governments. Successful citizen science projects can achieve positive societal change and produce a more participatory and transparent democracy with improved public understanding of our environment and urban ecology.
