Updated version of final design and of the architecture of SEAMLESS-IF

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Livestock Production/Industries,

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE WITH EXAMPLES FROM ECOLOGY AND BIODIVERSITY

Early informatics focused primarily on the application of technology and computer science to a specific domain; modern informatics has broadened to encompass human and knowledge dimensions. Application of technology is but one aspect of informatics. Understanding domain members’ issues, priorities, knowledge, abilities, interactions, tasks and work environments is another aspect, and one that directly impacts application success. Involving domain members in the design and development of technology in their domain is a key factor in bridging the gap between technology and science. This user-centered design (UCD) approach in informatics is presented via an ecoinformatics case study in three areas: collaboration, usability, and education and training

Designing Collaborative Data Collection Interfaces for Low-literate Users

Data collection applications on smartphone devices support indigenous communities in developing countries to record and preserve traditional ecological knowledge, collaboratively collect data around issues that are important to them and use these tools to subsequently identify locally-acceptable solutions with global impacts. Development of these interfaces needs to consider users’ familiarity with technology as well as their education and literacy levels. This study builds on existing HCI4D research, which is also of interest to the CSCW community, in order to develop and evaluate, for their usability and user preferences, four user interfaces with low-literate people in the UK. Our findings suggest that linear navigation structures and a tangible interface are almost equally usable and preferred when they require minimum interaction with the device. Our preliminary analysis provides a deeper insight into the design issues to inform development of smartphone-based interfaces using various interaction types and we report on our methodological challenges from carrying out HCI research with low-literate people in the UK. The findings of this paper are used to inform the experimental design of additional work that we carry out with low-literate users in Namibia