HCI-Evaluation of the GeoCitizen-reporting App for citizen participation in spatial planning and community management among members of marginalized communities in Cali, Colombia

Increasingly, geospatial web applications such as www.fixmystreet.com or www.seeclickfix.com are being integrated within citizen participation processes in spatial planning and the provision of communal services. Recently, several of these platforms have been launched in Latin America and other countries of the Global South. This development raises the questions of whether citizens with low ICT-skills can fully access and use these tools, and hence whether they are empowered to participate in related community management processes. The GeoCitizen framework (www.geocitizen.org) has been designed specifically to address citizens who tend to be excluded from established planning processes, providing them with accessible and easy-to-use online tools to make their voice heard through the public space of the internet. This paper describes the set-up and results of a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Evaluation carried out for the GeoCitizen-reporting application amongst members of marginalized communities in Cali, Colombia. It investigates whether spatially illiterate users with low ICT-skills can access and use this application to its full extent. It analyses the most common usability issues that were identified by the test user group and gives indications as to how geospatial web applications should be designed in order to meet the challenges that come along with its use.