Gamification in Crowdsourcing: A Review

This study investigates how different gamification implementations can increase crowdsourcees' motivation and participation in crowdsourcing (CS). To this end, we review empirical literature that has investigated the use of gamification in crowdsourcing settings. Overall, the results of the review indicate that gamification has been an effective approach for increasing crowdsourcing participation. When comparing crowdcreating,-solving,-processing and-rating CS approaches, the results show differences in the use of gamification across CS types. Crowdsourcing initiatives that provide more monotonous tasks most commonly used mere points and other simpler gamification implementations, whereas CS initiatives that seek for diverse and creative contributions have employed gamification in more manifold ways employing a richer set of mechanics. These findings provide insights for designers of gamified systems and further research on the topics of gamification and crowdsourcing

Public Engagement Technology for Bioacoustic Citizen Science

Inexpensive mobile devices offer new capabilities for non-specialist use in the field for the purpose of conservation. This thesis explores the potential for such devices to be used by citizen scientists interacting with bioacoustic data such as birdsong. This thesis describes design research and field evaluation, in collaboration with conservationists and educators, and technological artefacts implemented as mobile applications for interactive educational gaming and creative composition. This thesis considers, from a participant-centric collaborative design approach, conservationists' demand for interactive artefacts to motivate engagement in citizen science through gameful and playful interactions. Drawing on theories of motivation, frequently applied to the study of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and on approaches to designing for motivational engagement, this thesis introduces a novel pair of frameworks for the analysis of technological artefacts and for assessing participant engagement with bioacoustic citizen science from both game interaction design and citizen science project participation perspectives. This thesis reviews current theories of playful and gameful interaction developed for collaborative learning, data analysis, and ground-truth development, describes a process for design and analysis of motivational mobile games and toys, and explores the affordances of various game elements and mechanics for engaging participation in bioacoustic citizen science. This thesis proposes research into progressions for scaffolding engagement with citizen science projects where participants interact with data collection and analysis artefacts. The research process includes the development of multiple designs, analyses of which explore the efficacy of game interactions to motivate engagement through interaction progressions, given proposed analysis frameworks. This thesis presents analysed results of experiments examining the usability of, and data-quality from, several prototypes and software artefacts, in both laboratory conditions and the field. This thesis culminates with an assessment of the efficacy of proposed design analysis frameworks, an analysis of designed artefacts, and a discussion of how these designs increase intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for participant engagement and affect resultant bioacoustic citizen science data quantity and quality.Non

The Lens of the Lab: Design Challenges in Scientific Software

Playful and gameful design could improve the quality of scientific software. However, literature about gamification methods for that particular type of software is presently scarce. As an effort to fill that gap, this paper introduces a set of design challenges and opportunities that should be informative to professionals approaching the area. This research is based on literature review on scientific software development, also contemplating material on the gamification of science, software, and work. From the gathered information, we identify, map, and discuss key aspects of development and use of professional scientific software. Those findings are, then, formatted as a Design Lens—a set of questions designers should ask themselves to gain insight, from a particular perspective, on their work. We propose the Lens of the Lab as a design lens to support designers working in collaboration with scientists and software engineers in professional scientific software initiatives

Crowdsourcing data collection through mobile gamification : leveraging the freemium model

Classic ways of gathering data on human behavior, such as laboratory based user studies, can be time-consuming, costly and are subject to limited participant pools. Crowdsourcing offers a reduction in operating costs and access to a diverse and large participant pool, however issues arise concerning low worker pay and questions about data quality. Gamification provides a motivation to participate, but also requires the development of specialized, research-question specific games that can be costly to produce. We provide another alternative that combines gamification and crowdsourcing in a smartphone-based system that emulates the popular Freemium model of micro-transactions to motivate voluntary participation through in-game rewards, using a robust framework to study multiple unrelated research questions within the same system. We deployed our prototype framework on the Android market and gathered data over a period of 5 weeks. We compared this data to that gathered from a gamified laboratory version and a non-gamified laboratory version, and found that players who use the in-game rewards were motivated to do experimental tasks. The data showed that there was no difference between the groups for performance on a motor task; however, performance on a cognitive task was worse for the crowdsourced Android group. We discuss the possible reasons for this and provide options for improving data collection and performance on tasks

Amplifying Quiet Voices: Challenges and Opportunities for Participatory Design at an Urban Scale

Many Smart City projects are beginning to consider the role of citizens. However, current methods for engaging urban populations in participatory design activities are somewhat limited. In this paper, we describe an approach taken to empower socially disadvantaged citizens, using a variety of both social and technological tools, in a smart city project. Through analysing the nature of citizens’ concerns and proposed solutions, we explore the benefits of our approach, arguing that engaging citizens can uncover hyper-local concerns that provide a foundation for finding solutions to address citizen concerns. By reflecting on our approach, we identify four key challenges to utilising participatory design at an urban scale; balancing scale with the personal, who has control of the process, who is participating and integrating citizen-led work with local authorities. By addressing these challenges, we will be able to truly engage citizens as collaborators in co-designing their city