Co-design during a pandemic: the experiences of the Nachtlicht-BüHNE project in Germany

Abstract

The Helmholtz Association is Germany's largest scientific organization, consisting of 18 major research centres and focused on the "grand challenges" of our times. Our "Nachtlicht-BüHNE" project should demonstrate that citizen science and co-design can play an important role within the association. In Nachtlicht-BüHNE, we are developing two apps for data submission: one to report observations of fireballs (bright meteors), and another to conduct large-scale inventories of outdoor lighting. Citizen scientists are co-designing both of the apps, and also organizing local measurement campaigns in the artificial light experiment. The pandemic has presented a challenge to the project, because it has prevented us from holding our planned face-to-face meetings. The poster will present our experiences with co-design during a pandemic, and the differing ways in which the two individual experiments have approached communication with the co-designers.