QGIS for Secondary Education and Citizen Science: Lowering the barrier by customizing the user interface

QGIS can serve as a valuable tool for secondary education enabling students to explore real-world data sets, analyse spatial relationships, and create maps that can enhance their understanding of geography and living environment. Similary, QGIS offers a powerful platform for citizen science activities to collect, analyse, and visualize spatial data by volunteers to map environmental features, monitor habitats, and contribute to scientific research. However, both secondary school students and citizen scientists as non-technical individuals with limited prior exposure to geospatial software may face challenges in using QGIS due to its complex interface and the technical nature of software. Accessing and managing datasets, performing spatial analyses, and visualizing analysis results may require tailored training and guidance with the default user interface that has a steep learning curve. To lower this barrier, we leveraged the customization options offered by QGIS to tailor the interface and functionality to specific needs of non-technical users with a special emphasis on students and community members involving in citizen science activities. We modified toolbars and menus to streamline their typical workflows and access frequently used features efficiently. Additionally, we have also simplified available data visualization and processing functionalities to hide technical complexities. In this talk, we explain the modifications we implemented to obtain a practical and intuitive QGIS interface that can be learned and used quickly without prior technical knowledge. We will also demonstrate the prototype interface for common use cases.