DURATIONFall 2024
TOOLS USEDFigma, Google Forms, Observation Studies, Interviews
How can participatory data be used to tackle environmental justice?
Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, more than hurricanes and tornadoes combined. Heat extremes are particularly deadly in densely populated urban centers, with extreme temperatures disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable community members.
By empowering community members to conduct their own research and identify insights from their own localized experiences, they can be apart of producing complex research that informs the work of climate justice advocates and policymakers, putting the power in their hands to make change through research.
UrbanHeatATL is an environmental citizen science research organization that works was to guide community members in using handheld temperature sensors to gather, map, and analyze urban heat data from their very own neighborhoods in order for those most at risk to contribute scientific research around Atlanta’s heat islands.
My Background with UrbanHeatATL
I joined UrbanHeatATL back in 2022 as one of four interns working to support their citizen science work. Individually, we were spread out working on things ranging from sensor calibration to policy recommendations.
At the time, my specific role included:
- Designing and facilitating workshops on urban heat data and participatory data collection
- Using Jupyter Notebooks to build data flows
- Generating visualizations mapping urban heat data gathered by citizen scientists
Addressing this problem is where I started in Fall of 2024 when I returned to UrbanHeatATL as a Design Researcher, seeking to answer the question...
How can we create a custom data collection application designed for the needs of citizen scientists?
What should data do for citizen scientists?
Many of the Urban Heat citizen scientists are not as concerned with how comprehensive the collected heat data was as opposed to how representative it was for their own experiences. Based on my previous familiarity of working with them, I knew that for them, the data should...
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Depict the breadth of their experience with heat
- Include cultural and community context
- Promote discussion and collaboration rather than staying in the hands of researchers
What I didn’t know yet was...
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What other kinds of data would be valuable to collect?
- How was this community talking about their experiences with heat?
- How can a digital tool be used to guide reflection on heat through data collection?
Making observations on a heat sensor workshop
Going into the ideation process, I luckily already had some context around what citizen scientists were wanting from a potential data collection experience. For them, the data collection process should...
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Depict the breadth of their experience with heat
- Include cultural and community context
- Promote discussion and collaboration rather than staying in the hands of researchers
What I didn’t know yet was...
-
What other kinds of data would be valuable to collect?
- How was this community talking about their experiences with heat?
- How can a digital tool be used to guide reflection on heat through data collection?
To start to investigate these questions, I conducted some Participant-observation sessions during a few facilitated heat sensor workshops that Urban Heat hosted. There were four primary parts of a heat sensor workshop so at each stage I highlighted key questions to keep in mind.
Organizing and coding qualitative outcomes
After observing a group of 25 citizen scientists and interviewing 4 of them, the most salient outcomes were all around how they were talking about heat data. I organized all of the key discussion points and quotes that I heard over the session to pull out two key insights.
The subjectivity of heat
Discussions around subjective heat were far more resonant and frequent than reflections on objecting temperature data. Even if a sensor said 80 degrees, the number could feel dramatically different depending on if you were, say, standing and waiting for the bus in direct sun versus sitting in the shade by a pond. We already had a system for more objective and scientific temperature data via the handheld sensors. What about the subjective experience?
Design Insight: Center the experience around the embodied or subjective heat experience rather than objective temperature.
The relationship between heat, our bodies, and our built environment
Participants talked a lot about how heat felt in their bodies, methods they use to feel more comfortable, and how elements of thier built environment effected that comfortability. Things like awnings, fire hydrants, fountains, or hot pavement gave additional experiential context to the numerical temperature and mapped to ways that community members could advocate for impactful changes to their environment.
Design Insight: Implement photo taking and free response capabilities
Testing a preliminary user flow
After identifying key design considerations, I outlined a loose MVP user flow to test the effectiveness of before going on to design the actual application. To confirm the effectiveness of this user flow, I converted it into a Google Form to prototype the interaction. I then recruited 5 participants to go on a walk while filling out the form, and then give feedback on the whole experience.
- Select your comfort level using a relative heat dial
- Take a photo of your environment
- Add an caption expanding on your experience
- (optional) Review or send your data to UrbanHeatATL researchers
Each participant visualized their data in a variety of ways but what came forth was that by allowing participants to explain their temperature experience via subjective comfort levels, they were able to reflect on their ability to change their material conditions and how. For instance, regardless of the objective temperature, this participant noted that where there was more shade, the walk felt more comfortable. Where there was less tree coverage or shade it was clearly noticable.
OUTCOME
My Heat Journal App Design
I was responsible for mocking up and iterating upon two design flows over the course of the design process. For each, I started out with low fidelity designs so that the developers could have the time to implement, then I got feedback during our weekly design critiques, iterated on designs, and increased fidelity each sprint.
Add a new heat journal entry
Here users are able to use a slider to select their relative comfortability at that moment in time, take a photo of something in their environment that is impacting the heat comfortability in some way, and select ways that they could increase their comfort level at that time.Viewing past heat journal entries
Being able to sort through past heat journal entries proved helpful for participants to be able to have conversations with each other about collective patterns that they noticed.
These localized data archives also allowed for any data to remain in the hands of citizen scientists unless they manually chose to share it to researchers.
Send data to UrbanHeatATL
researchers
If citizen scientists are in a position where they are interested in and willing to collaborate with academic researchers or other stakeholder, they are able to package up their heat journals and share as a zipped file. They have control over what days and specific data is included in this file to ensure a consentful data experience.