Developing mobile applications for environmental and biodiversity citizen science: considerations and recommendations

The first outcome of the December 2016 workshop on apps, platforms, and portals for citizen science projects was the open access paper "Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science", which came out in October 2017. The workshop, which was organised by Soledad Luna and Ulrike Sturm from the Berlin Museum for Natural History, has …

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Citizen Science & Scientific Crowdsourcing – week 2 – Google Local Guides

The first week of the "Introduction to Citizen Science and Scientific Crowdsourcing" course was dedicated to an introduction to the field of citizen science using the history, examples and typologies to demonstrate the breadth of the field. The second week was dedicated to the second half of the course name - crowdsourcing in general, and its …

Defining principles for mobile apps and platforms development in citizen science

In December 2016, ECSA and the Natural History Museum in Berlin organised a  workshop on analysing apps, platforms, and portals for citizen science projects. Now, the report from the workshop with an addition from a second workshop that was held in April 2017 has evolved into an open peer review paper on RIO Journal. The …

Google Research Award – Identifying Learning Benefits of Google Earth Tours in Education

It is always nice to announce good news. Back in February, together with Richard Treves at the University of Southampton, I submitted an application to the Google’s Faculty Research Award program for a grant to investigate Google Earth Tours in education. We were successful in getting a grant worth $86,883 USD.  The project builds on …

Some important questions about the usability of geospatial technologies

At the beginning of May, I gave a lecture at the UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) seminar titled 'Interacting with Geospatial Technologies - Overview and Research Challenges'. The talk was somewhat similar to the one that I gave at the BCS Geospatial SIG. However, I was trying to answer a question that I was asked during …

G3 – Bridging the Gap between the GeoWeb and GIS

The G3 Project, is a new project led by Claire Ellul and  Kate Jones and funded by the JISC geospatial working group.  The project's aim is to create an interactive online mapping tutorial system for students in areas that are not familiar with GIS such as urban design, anthropology and environmental management. The project can …

Maps are wonderful, but GIS are hard to use. What can we do about it?

These are the slides from the presentation that I gave to the BCS Geospatial SG. The talk abstract is: Here is a useful party trivia: as a form of human communication, maps pre-date text by thousands of years - some early spatial depictions are 25,000 years old, whereas writing emerged only 4000 years ago. When …

Interacting with Geospatial Technologies – now available

Finally, after 2 years in the making, Interacting with Geospatial Technologies is out. It is the first textbook dedicated to usability and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) aspects of geographical information technologies. It covers desktop, Web and mobile applications and how they can be designed so they are more effective, efficient, error-free, easy to learn and enjoyable, which …

ICA Commission on Use and User Issues – GISRUK workshop

The Commission on Use and User Issues of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) is currently working on a new handbook specifically addressing the application of user research methods and techniques in the area of geographical information and its applications. In order to share experiences and interesting case studies a workshop is organized by the Commission, …

Second workshop on geographic information usability – March 2010

In March 2009 Ordnance Survey together with the Human Factors group at the University of Nottingham, ran a workshop on the usability of geographic information.  Bringing together a new grouping of researchers from across disciplines of Human Factors, HCI, Computer Science and Geographic Information Science, the aim of the workshop was to share perspectives on …