Towns conquer: a gamified application to collect geographical names (vernacular names/toponyms)

The traditional model for geospatial crowd sourcing asks the public to use their free time collecting geospatial data for no obvious reward. This model has shown to work very well on projects such as Open Street Map, but comes with some clear disadvantages such as reliance on small communities of ‘Neo-geographers’ and variability in quality and content of collected data. This project aims at tackling these problems by providing alternative motivation specifically a smartphone based computer game service. Geographical names (vernacular names/ toponyms) have been identified as potential targets as they are difficult to collect on a large scale and easy to collect locally, thus ideal for crowd sourcing. The data set will be a toponyms database provided by the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN Spain). A location based game is targeted as it is easy to guide data collection with in-game rewards (prizes, points, badges etc.). Android is chosen for its accessible API and wide use

Competing or aiming to be average?: Normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems

Incentive Mechanisms for Participatory Sensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Participatory sensing is a powerful paradigm which takes advantage of smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously possible. Given that participatory sensing systems rely completely on the users' willingness to submit up-to-date and accurate information, it is paramount to effectively incentivize users' active and reliable participation. In this paper, we survey existing literature on incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems. In particular, we present a taxonomy of existing incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems, which are subsequently discussed in depth by comparing and contrasting different approaches. Finally, we discuss an agenda of open research challenges in incentivizing users in participatory sensing.Comment: Updated version, 4/25/201

Gamification Techniques and Contribution Filtering in Crowdsourcing Micro-Task Applications

The rapid expansion of the internet has led to a growing worldwide user base, with Brazil alone having approximately 83% of households connected to the network, equating to around 61.8 million households. Crowdsourcing, a production model that harnesses collective wisdom for problem-solving, has gained prominence in this digital landscape. Challenges in crowdsourcing include improving people's motivation and engagement and verifying the quality of a high number of contributions. In our research, we investigated the hypothesis that using gamification techniques, including recognition badges, feedback mechanisms, and user rankings, improves users' engagement and motivation in crowdsourcing micro-tasks applications. This paper presents ConTask, a crowdsourcing micro-task application, and two studies conducted to investigate the impact of using gamification techniques and contribution filtering as motivational factors in crowdsourcing. The first was a case study comparing two versions of ConTask: the original version and a gamified one. The second was an experimental study to evaluate the developed contribution filtering mechanism. Findings suggest that the use of gamification and contribution filtering can improve user participation in crowdsourcing micro-task applications

Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process, since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN