Citizen science websites are emerging as a common way for volunteers to collect and report
geographic ecological data. Engaging the public in citizen science is challenging and, when
involving online participation, data entry, and map use, becomes even more daunting. Given
these new challenges, citizen science websites must be easy to use, result in positive overall
satisfaction for many different users, supportmany different tasks, and ensure data quality. To
begin reaching these goals, we built a geospatially enabled citizen science website, evaluated
its usability, and gained experience byworkingwith and listening to citizens using thewebsite.
We sought to determine general perceptions, discover potential problems, and iteratively
improve website features.Although thewebsite was rated positively overall,map-based tasks
identified a wide range of problems. Given our results, we redesigned the website, improved
the content, enhanced the ease of use, simplified the map interface, and added features. We
discuss citizen science websites in relation to online Public Participation Geographic
Information Systems, examine the role(s) websites may play in the citizen science research
model, discuss how citizen science research advances GIScience, and offer guidelines to
improve citizen-based web mapping applications.
Keywords: Public Participation GIS; usability; citizen science