An interdisciplinary approach is needed to deal with complex ecological issues such as climate changes and mass extinction. This past winter as part of the Open Life Science mentorship program, a software developer collaborated with local government officials, citizen science project organizers, researchers, and educators to create online data exploration tools (DataExplorers.info) that combines iNaturalist data and environment data. iNaturalist is a citizen science project that asks participants to photograph and document the nature around them. By creating a site that gives citizen scientists the chance to explore the data that they help collect, we hope citizen scientists will be encouraged to form their own questions, gain a better understanding of the nature of science, and thereby create a more engaging experience for both participants and organizers. This presentations will cover the opportunities and challenges the interdisciplinary team encountered.
Results/Conclusions
It was the combination of the different view points and backgrounds, and a willingness to do things differently that made this project this possible. As a software developer, I didn’t know what type of science questions could be asked from iNaturalist data. For many of the iNaturalist project organizers, they had no experience working on an interactive website. I applied ideas from private sector software consultancy world to this project: interviewing users to identify problems, quick iterations, constantly getting feedback, consulting domain experts.
