Co-designing an air quality web app with school pupils and staff: the SAMHE web app
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This methods paper describes a new UK-wide citizen science project, the Schools’ Air Quality Monitoring for Health and Education (SAMHE) project, which is exploring indoor air quality (IAQ) in schools. Central to the project is a Web App, where school teachers and pupils can see air quality and environmental data from their classroom, learn about the significance of the data that their monitor collects, enter important contextual information to support data analysis by researchers, and are supported to do their own experiments related to air quality. School use of the SAMHE Web App is essential to the project’s aims to 1) improve understanding of air quality in schools; 2) empower teachers and pupils to make informed decisions about management of their classroom environment, including ventilation; and 3) support the UK’s next generation to think differently about air quality. Therefore, it is critical that the SAMHE Web App was co-designed with schools, to maximise its acceptability within schools, and to ensure that teachers and pupils engage with it. This paper describes the co-design process used within SAMHE, how co-design has helped shape the web app (including overall theme, visualisation of data, and supporting materials), and some lessons learned from the process that will be useful for future software development and citizen science projects with schools.
Date Issued
2023-11-29
Date Acceptance
2023-10-26
Citation
Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2023, 8 (1)
ISSN
2057-4991
Publisher
Ubiquity Press
Journal / Book Title
Citizen Science: Theory and Practice
Volume
8
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/cstp.620
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
64
Date Publish Online
2023-11-29