'I did this!' - A feedback feature for instruction manuals on Public Lab

'I did this!' - A feedback feature for instruction manuals on Public Lab

Short introduction to the feature

On Public Lab users can publish activities, which contain mostly instruction manuals on how to build and use do-it-yourself environmental monitoring tools. For example, how to build a plant-based air purifier. The platform encourages users to replicate these activities and publish their experiences, so the authors get feedback and the instructions can be improved, if necessary, or adapted to different contexts and use cases.

How does it work?

When users create an activity - which works similar to a blog post - they can add a feature at the bottom of the page that shows an “I did this”-button and a list of links to replicated activities (see Figure 1)

A screenshot of the “I did this” button and a list of replications of the activity
Figure 1: The “I did this” button and a list of replications of the activity (Link)

When users click the button, they are guided to a markdown template (see Figure 2) which helps them to structure their feedback, which will be published as a new activity linked to the original activity by a unique tag.

A screenshot of the textbox containing the template for a replicated activity
Figure 2: The default template for replicated activities (Link)

Thoughts

I like this feature, because it encourages other users to become active, replicate an activity and document it, so the original author and other users can profit from hands-on feedback. By automatically collecting all replications in a list using a tag system, it is easy to get an overview of how many times this activity has been tried and tested, and the content is easy to find. This feature is suitable for open ended tasks without one definite solution that benefit from qualitative feedback.

References

Katharina
Katharina

PhD student at CRI (Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity) in Paris, experimenting with a user-centered approach to support the peer-production of knowledge in citizen science.

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