Peer Production in Citizen Science A Guide

About

About me and the context of this website

Hello, I am Katharina, I am a Human-Computer Interaction researcher. On this website, you can find lessons and insights from my PhD project conducted at Université Paris Cité, supervised by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras and Ariel Lindner. Specifically, I aim to share methods and best practices related to peer production, knowledge management, participatory design, and user experience (UX). While these guides primarily target researchers and practitioners in the field of citizen science, they may also prove valuable to anyone seeking to develop online tools in collaboration with communities of practice.

My PhD project, in less than 150 words

First, I tried to understand what peer production means, and how it is used in citizen science projects to date. To this end, I summarized key characteristics of peer production to a working model, and applied it to three citizen science case studies (iNaturalist, Public Lab, Zooniverse).

Then, to apply this knowledge to a specific use case, I used a design-thinking process to co-design a peer production approach for and with the personal science community.

This process led to the creation of the Personal Science Wiki. The lessons learned regarding the design of community knowledge management platforms, synergies and challenges of implementing participatory design and peer production, as well as motivations and trade-offs of using peer production over crowdsourcing approaches in citizen science contexts are summarized on this website.

Here is an illustration of the process that I made at the very beginning of my PhD:

Contact

To get in touch, you can contact me via email or create an issue on GitHub. Feedback is very much appreciated!