Sensor Journalism and Citizen Science: It’s About the Social Ergonomics, Stupid.

7 min readSep 25, 2014

“I’m not worried about water. We have plenty of water in the Northeast. It’s clean, and it tastes fine.

“You can drink water out of the tap here in Boston without worrying about it. Some places get it all the way from the Quabbin — pure mountain water, piped in to the city.

“I heard someone say recently that arsenic could be a problem — and not just for private well water — maybe even in tap water. But when they say ‘problem’, they mean ‘might give you cancer in 20 years.’ I’m about as scared by that as I am by Lyme, and ticks: I’m scared when I think about it, sure; but I try not to think about it very often.

“You know what I’m really worried about? Sleep. I don’t think I get enough sleep. There’s some new study saying that we all really need 8 hours; who knows whether these studies are legit, but I do know that I feel tired a lot. I’d love to know whether I’m getting enough sleep — or whether I’m slowly giving myself cancer, or reducing my IQ by several points — just because I’m bad at going to bed early. My partner says I snore. Maybe I have sleep apnea. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

“I’m also worried that these donuts are going to give me diabetes. To be honest: I have one every morning, because there’s a donut shop right next to the bus stop. Hopefully the coffee is increasing my lifespan a bit, and it all balances out. But yeah, it seems like everyone’s becoming diabetic in this country. If it’s because of the sugar and the carbs, then we’re in trouble — there’s a donut or a pizza every two blocks in this city.

“Okay, listen to this. Hear that? When I breath out all the way like that, at the end, there’s a little wheeze. I’ve been coughing at night. That’s new. Last few weeks, after moving to the city. Probably because I stand here waiting for the bus in busy traffic. All this exhaust. The buses are terrible when they start moving — dense, evil clouds of smoke coming out of those things. Or maybe it’s just the start of some asthma. Or who knows — maybe both.

“Anyway, I’ve been meaning to get the cough, at least, checked out. Just moved here, though, and I haven’t figured out yet where to go for a checkup.”

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My friend Megan coined the ‘social ergonomics’ when discussing a common feature of most crowd-sourced science or journalism projects: they don’t work. Not very well; and, when they do work, not for very long.

Why don’t citizen science or crowd-sourced journalism projects work? Because most people don’t want to be ‘sensor platforms’ — except maybe briefly, for kicks. We have enough to worry about. You can mail us a free attachment for our smart phones that will measure air quality levels in the city. We might even use it once, because you can convince us that if everyone did this, policy makers could … build a detailed model of air pollution? Or acquire enough data to … convince the EPA that there’s a problem? Actually, you haven’t even been very clear about what the data would be used for, really …

Anyway, I’ll maybe download the app, and use the air pollution thingy once; but I’m not going to do it more than once or twice. I’m not going to bring it with me on my commute every day. I have at least 30 apps on my phone that I paid for, and don’t use. I mean: I’m paying a lot of money each month for a gym membership, and I never go to the gym. So I’m not going to be a very effective sensor platform, sorry. Even if it’s for a good cause. I just don’t have the mental / life bandwidth for it. That air quality sensor is going to stay located at home, in my desk drawer, next to the letter opener I thought looked fancy at Staples and never use.

One system that uses people as sensors and works very well: traffic statistics, using collected GPS stats from smart phones. They’re tracking us without telling us, and it’s amazingly effective at generating good traffic data. But boy, is that creepy. That’s cheating: that’s like increasing vaccination statistics by sneaking into people’s homes at night and jabbing them with a needle. Or more aptly: that’s like putting a radio tag on cattle. That’s not ‘citizen science’ or ‘citizen journalism’, except in a top-down, centralized, creepy way.

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Even if we think that a citizen-based, grassroots effort could help to solve some important social problem, we first need to ask people what they really care about. We need to begin from there.

People are freaked out about their health in this country. Everyone’s afraid to get sick, or die early. Not to belittle such worries: they’re clearly important, on a personal level.

A looming energy crisis and the prospect of water shortages don’t really register on a personal level, with most people. It’s even hard to get people to care much about decrepit city infrastructure, even if it makes their daily commute painful.

Here’s the punchline: if you want to address some social ill — one that affects all of us, is important, but which no one really cares about on a personal, day-to-day level — then you’re going to need to connect it to something people reflexively care about. Otherwise your project is going to fizzle.

This insight is probably the first lesson, on the first day, of Marketing 101. Most of the people I know who are thinking hard about citizen science and sensor journalism also tend to think that ‘marketing’ is a dirty word. But the marketing folks have thought a lot about these issues; and are, from all appearances, really good at their jobs. Folks who design citizen science / citizen journalism projects should be talking more with people in marketing and sales. It’d probably only take an afternoon for the marketing and sales folks to completely tear apart most citizen science and sensor journalism projects, showing how they don’t have a chance of going viral or being widely adopted. Those tear-down sessions should happen early in the design of a citizen science or citizen journalism project, to avoid wasting lots of time, money, and other resources. And then maybe we can start to figure out what will work.

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Let’s design a device that measures air pollution and tests to see whether you have asthma symptoms. It can have two tubes — one for ambient air sampling, and one that you exhale into as hard as you can. So if I’m worried about my cough / wheezing, and I think it’s tied to living in a city with a lot of traffic, I can answer this question for myself, while contributing to a collective effort.

Let’s make a sensor that shines light through your finger and measures your blood glucose level, and connects to a calorie-tracker app that allows you to monitor which foods you eat. Sufficiently anonymized, public health folks can collect data on which foods, in which places, are spiking blood sugar. But what’s driving it is the individual’s interest in knowing whether they need to stay away form sugary foods.

Let’s design an attachment to breast pumps to analyze breast milk for toxic chemicals coming from the local environment. Breast milk has such high levels of pollutants, like pesticides, that it would be banned as a foodstuff by the FDA (and yet it’s still the most healthful substance, by far, for newborns). Nursing mothers would want to know this information, because they’re concerned about their personal health and the health of their children; and if they’re willing to contribute their data to a collective database, we’d learn a lot about what chemicals are worrisome, where.

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It’s the social ergonomics, stupid.

Thanks Megan. And if there are any further good ideas in the above ramble, they’re due to conversations with the “Highly Relevant People”, below — thank all y’all, too.

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Highly Relevant and Effective People:

Highly Relevant and Effective Readings:

(If you know of more, please add them in the comments!)

Credits:

Header photo is stolen from here.
“Cops in a Donut Shop” photo is from here.
“Feline asthma” photo is from here.
“GPS traffic” photo is from here.
Lemming-laptops in a marketing classroom photo is from here.
Ergonomic camera attachment for smartphone photo is from here.

Sensor Journalism and Citizen Science: It’s About the Social Ergonomics, Stupid.

Written by donblair (+ w)