On 8 October, the first ECOMAPS co-design workshop took place at the Venice Scientific Campus! Fourteen participants – including students and representatives of local associations and organisations working on air quality, among them the Veneto Regional Agency for Environmental Prevention and Protection (ARPAV) – joined forces with the project’s scientists to make a tangible contribution to the development of a web app on air quality. This online platform will provide real-time information on air pollution in the Venice and Ljubljana areas, with a particular focus on Black Carbon, a pollutant responsible for adverse effect on health and significant impact on the climate.
During the two-hour session, participants first freely shared their knowledge of pollution sources and pollutants, then engaged directly with the scientific team to discuss what black carbon is and what remains unknown about its effects. Through a card-sorting exercise, they were asked to group and prioritise the content they would like to find on the platform, before designing their own prototype of an ideal screen layout. In the final part of the session, participants tested the beta version of the web app with a practical task, comparing what they had envisaged with the actual experience.
The feedback gathered during the workshop will now be used to implement changes to the platform. The same workshop will be repeated on 24 November 2026 in Ljubljana, in Slovenian.
The workshop was designed and led by Enrico Costa (ECHO – Science Communication Hub), with operational support from Anna Meneghini and scientific supervision by Elena Gregoris (CNR – Institute of Polar Sciences) and Giovanna Mazzi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice).
