Gamification, citizen science, and civic technologies: In search of the common good

In this paper, we discuss the importance of gameplay as a valuable tool in citizen sensing initiatives aimed at enabling creative collaboration and civic engagement. We present a review of selected citizen science and civic technologies’ projects highlighting an emerging culture of massive collaborative initiatives that make use of crowdsourcing, enabling users to voluntarily contribute their time, effort and resources towards scientific research and civic issues. Moreover, we discuss how these initiatives could benefit from the inclusion of gameplay in their interaction processes. For that matter, we present a gamified citizen sensing project we are devising for users to enter and retrieve information on commercially available food products which contain ingredients associated with an increased risk of cancer and other diseases. Through gameplay, we expect to crowdsource an open database of potentially unhealthy food products, raising awareness among consumers about the risks of certain artificial additives. Finally, we argue that the use of gamification processes can engage voluntary participation in initiatives aimed at citizenship – including those which demand complex and repetitive tasks for the collection of data – and call for a more ethical, critical, and meaningful use of these new potential technologies, and for greater awareness of our new civic responsibilities.Keywords: interaction design, gamification, citizen sensing, mobile applications, artificial food additives

Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the idea of urban design as a virtual space evolves as a reflexive instance between pixels and ideas that help to develop a new perception of space and social life. It explores inter alia, routines and perceptions where we often do not even recognize that the virtual has entangled with reality. The book describes a cognitive design computing system for urban planners. It focuses on understanding the relationship between an emergent structure and processes. The book discusses four game concepts ranging from very serious games to more playful virtual game-based environments. All created games may be used to facilitate participatory processes in urban planning. The book demonstrates how Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and virtual platforms can be implemented for a mobile device and offers ten key questions that need to be asked in the process of creating a facilitated-VGI

A Game-based Approach for Open Data in Education:A Systematic Mapping Review

Abstract Open Data is defined as digital data that is made available with the technical and legal characteristics necessary to be freely used, reused, and redistributed by anyone, anytime and anywhere. Examples of Open Data can be data on mobility or pollution, which an increasing number of cities are making available to citizens. In education, the novel field of Open Data has the potential of empowering a young generation with digital skills and critical thinking through work with real-life Open Data. However, the scarcity of methods and tools for skills development and insertion into educational designs reduces the possibility of achieving this potential. This study is part of the project ODECO, aimed at addressing challenges in the creation of Open Data ecosystems in several contexts, such as education. A systematic mapping review was conducted to uncover the research connections between Open Data education and educational games. Twenty-eight studies were identified and analysed through iterative searching and including keywords related to Gamification, Open Data and Education. In doing this, relevant themes and novel approaches in the current literature were found. This paper discusses how the fields of Open Data education and educational games methodologically and theoretically contribute to outline a game-based approach for Open Data in education. An Open Data Gamified Education Framework leads to authentic learning experiences for real-world problem solving in relation to eight actions: connecting classroom activities to real facts, empowering students to act with Open Data, supporting technical Open Data skills in the classroom, building literacy and developing skills, enhancing civic participation, creating more realistic and appealing narratives, extending teaching outside the classroom by collecting data in real time and local settings, and increasing engagement and motivation. Acknowledgments. This study is funded by the ODECO Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2020, grant agreement 955569), which aims at addressing challenges in the creation of user driven, circular, skill-based, and inclusive Open Data ecosystems (ODECO - Towards a Sustainable Open Data ECOsystem, 2021)

Gamification in urban design for upgrading the informal settlements (open public space) in African neighborhoods

The city and architecture of today and the future will face and are facing the challenge of innovation. Simultaneously, Informal African neighborhoods; present challenges to human sustainable development and equity, safety, environmental quality, and resiliency issues. As ICT becomes pervasive, architects have to rethink rules for communication between the citizen and physical urban space. Accordingly, the digital participation integration in specific Serious Games can be a tool to empower slum residents and engage communities to participate in settlement upgrading design based on SDG 11. Thus, the proposed paper will present an overview of the participatory gamification technology involved in civic engagement in informal African neighborhoods that fosters engagement and democratization. The research reaches from Literature review on some Gaming tools and participatory process Articles. Moreover, to achieve the goals, a detailed study on; authors and the extensive research of HABITAT on informal settlements and the United Nations, qualitative data analysis methods to organize and interpret the collected research findings. This analysis showed that Gaming tools and Gamification as a methodology; helps to; empower any residents with different knowledge to participate in settlement upgrading design in specific Minecraft can foster engagement, make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable with communities of different ages and specifically women and children without any expertise and knowledge.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digitalization within the informal settlements. Participatory technologies in design for upgrading the informality in Maputo, Mozambique

Participatory Technologies in design offers an opportunity for architects to re-design cities and find new opportunities, in different scales, with their citizens, to create new economic, social, environmental values and provide better public realms and empowering the community by engaging them in participatory actions, aiming at the sustainability of urban public space and rapidly suppress its insufficiencies. Accordingly, the city and architecture of the future face the challenge of innovation in an evolution that involves society, economy, environment, etc. But what about the informal settlements which are dealing with socio-economic and environmental issues? These neighborhoods present the greatest challenges to human sustainable development and equity, safety, environmental quality, and resiliency central to the New Urban Agenda. As information and communication technology (ICT) becomes pervasive, the architect has to rethink the rules for communication between the citizen and physical urban space for adapting to the period in which we are living in. Over the last few decades, an increasingly collaborative work developed among spatial practitioners such as architects, urban planners, artists and, media designers; has produced a particular landscape of projects that engage information technology as a catalytic tool for interactions in the physical urban space. ICT, mobiles, applications, and digital technologies are tools to empower slum residents and their youth to have greater control over their lives. Communities and prosperity through access to information and knowledge are going to be more engaged and empowered. Basically, to develop a public realm or neighborhood or a barrio, the first tool is data. Architects and decision-makers will be the data users. Moreover, citizens will be the Data collectors and, in this system, they can get aware of individual impacts on themselves and the whole. Enabling communities to participate in settlement planning and upgrading including, the management of new infrastructure undoubtedly, requires action at the political level but, we cannot hesitate architect’s role to society aim to provide lasting solutions to specific needs and, the active participation of the community lends these additional values. In this context, the proposed paper will present an overview of the participatory digital technologies involved in civic engagement in informal cities in Africa. This analysis is essential to define the application of spatial acupunctures or plug-ins in the public realm and urban environment to upgrade the informality in Maputo, Mozambique.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Crowdsourcing Civics Instruction to Improve Student Civic Knowledge, Skills, and Citizen Engagement

Secondary students’ lack of civic knowledge, skills, and engagement is well documented in the literature. States continue to address the issue through an increase in mandated civics requirements, but a striking improvement has not been confirmed. Improving civics instructional delivery through crowdsourcing holds promise in addressing deficits in students’ acquisition of civic knowledge, skills, and engagement. Crowdsourcing is the act of using the internet to obtain information and input from multiple parties on specific topics and to find solutions to problems. The purpose of this study was to determine if crowdsourcing may be an effective instructional tool that civics teachers could use in their classrooms to close the civics achievement gap. The following research questions guided this study: What are civics teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of crowdsourcing as an instructional tool in high school civics courses, and how can crowdsourcing be implemented into high school civics curriculum? A case study design was determined to be the appropriate methodology to use to answer the research questions. A survey instrument with both Likert Scale and open-ended questions was administered to civics teachers in seven urban school districts in Florida. Results from the data analysis indicate that crowdsourcing can be an effective instructional tool for teaching civics. However, survey bias inhibited the study’s ability to determine what other examples of crowdsourcing can be implemented in the civics classroom

Plan on the move : mobile participation in urban planning state-of-the-art and future potential

Citizen participation in urban planning has been a topic of academic and practical interest since the 1960s. The adoption of information and communication technologies for civic participation, electronic participation, impacts how citizens and urban planners interact. Within the field of electronic participation, mobile participation is a rather recent chapter. The proliferation of mobile technologies enables both novel forms of participation and the embeddedness of these technologies into existing practices of participation. This dissertation contains five studies exploring how emerging practices of mobile participation are changing citizen participation in urban planning. Each of the five studies describes a facet of mobile participation, beginning with an overview of participatory planning apps in use; exploring next how citizens develop apps themselves; turning then to the theoretical basis of mobile participation grounded in previous theories of participation and the digital divide; covering further the actual usage of the Täsä urban planning app; and finally, discussing self-organized community planning using mobile technologies. The results provide an overview of the specific features enhancing democratic urban planning, asses who develops mobile apps and with what intentions, and contrasts the circumstances conducive to inclusiveness in mobile participation. Mobile phones are ubiquitous and possess a combination of unique affordances such as situated engagement and participatory sensing, enabling rich, real-time data collection and experimentation. These features resonate with early adopters who, in order to affect change, need to be embedded in the institutional civic participation setting. For citizens, mobile technologies have diversified the roles of participation, so that citizens can choose between being informed, contributing ideas, or developing applications. Finally, the apps developed with open data are the result of negotiations between developers’ agency and open data availability. Overall, this dissertation suggests that mobile participation is socially constructed in as far as the features and practices implemented are subject to a host of stakeholder interests. To this end, mobile participation is conceptualized as maximum allowed deviation: it affords new practices that reshape citizen participation while being part of established forms of civic participation.Kansalaisten osallistuminen kaupunkisuunnitteluun on kiinnostanut sekä tiedeyhteisöä että suunnittelijoita jo 1960-luvulta lähtien. Informaatio- ja kommunikaatioteknologian omaksuminen sekä sähköinen osallistuminen ovat vaikuttaneet siihen, miten kaupunkilaiset ja suunnittelijat ovat vuorovaikutuksessa toisiinsa. Mobiiliosallistuminen on uusi sähköisen osallistumisen ilmiö. Mobiililaitteiden nopea leviäminen sekä mahdollistaa uusia osallistumismuotoja että sulautuu jo olemassa oleviin käytäntöihin niitä muuntaen. Tämä väitöskirja koostuu viidestä artikkelista, joissa tutkitaan miten mobiiliosallistuminen muuttaa kansalaisten osallistumista kaupunkisuunniteluun. Osatutkimukset tarkastelevat mobiiliosallistumista eri näkökulmista. Ensimmäiseksi on kartoitettu millaisia kaupunkisuunnitteluun ja kaupunkien hallintaan osallistavia sovelluksia maailmassa oli käytössä vuoteen 2015 mennessä. Toiseksi on tutkittu, miten kansalaiset osallistuvat itse sovelluksien kehittämiseen avoimen datan kilpailuissa. Kolmanneksi on tutkittu edellytyksiä mobiiliosallistumiselle, perustaen tarkastelu sosiaalisiin ja poliittisiin osallistumisteorioihin sekä digitaalisen kuilun ylittämistä koskeviin tutkimuksiin. Neljännessä osatutkimuksessa esitellään Turussa 2015 toteutetun mobiiliosallistumisen kokeilun (Täsä) tuloksia ja viidennessä käsitellään mobiiliteknologian käyttöä kaupunkilaisten itse-organisoituvassa osallistumisessa. Tulokset kertovat miten teknologiset ominaisuudet muuttavat osallistuvaa kaupunkisuunnittelua, mikä ja mitkä tahot vaikuttavat sovellusten kehittämiseen avoimella datalla, ja millä ehdoilla mobiililaitteiden avulla voidaan saavuttaa laaja osallistuminen. Mobiililaitteet ovat jo nyt ihmisten mukana kaikkialla. Niiden ominaisuudet mahdollistavat osallistumisen paikan päällä (situated engagement) ja osallistumisen sensoridatan keräämiseen (participatory sensing) ja siten uusiin ja aiempaa monipuolisempiin käyttäjä- ja paikkalähtöisiin analyyseihin. Tämä ominaisuudet ovat olleet houkuttelevia aikaisille omaksujille. Institutionaalista tukea kuitenkin tarvitaan, että uuden teknologian mahdollisuudet voidaan tehdä tutuksi laajalle yleisölle. Mobiiliosallistuminen on myös monipuolistanut osallistumisrooleja: sen avulla kansalaiset voivat aiempaan helpommin valita mitä informaatiota saavat, esittää omia ideoitaan ja kehittää omia sovelluksia.Avoimen datan kilpailuissa kehitetyt sovellukset ovat kompromissi kehittäjien tavoitteiden ja käytössä olevan datan välillä. Kokonaisuudessaan väitöskirja esittää, että mobiiliosallistuminen on sosiaalisesti rakentunutta, siinä määrin kuin sen ominaisuudet ja käytännöt määrittyvät eri tahojen intressien yhteensovittamisessa. Tämän vuoksi mobiiliosallistuminen käsitteellistyy ”suurimmaks sallituksi poikkeamaksi”: se mahdollistaa uusia käytäntöjä jotka muokkaavat kansalaisten osallistumista samalla kun ne ovat jo osa vakiintunutta kansalaisten osallistumista

Gamification, citizen science, and civic technologies: In search of the common good

In this paper, we discuss the importance of gameplay as a valuable tool in citizen sensing initiatives aimed at enabling creative collaboration and civic engagement. We present a review of selected citizen science and civic technologies’ projects highlighting an emerging culture of massive collaborative initiatives that make use of crowdsourcing, enabling users to voluntarily contribute their time, effort and resources towards scientific research and civic issues. Moreover, we discuss how these initiatives could benefit from the inclusion of gameplay in their interaction processes. For that matter, we present a gamified citizen sensing project we are devising for users to enter and retrieve information on commercially available food products which contain ingredients associated with an increased risk of cancer and other diseases. Through gameplay, we expect to crowdsource an open database of potentially unhealthy food products, raising awareness among consumers about the risks of certain artificial additives. Finally, we argue that the use of gamification processes can engage voluntary participation in initiatives aimed at citizenship – including those which demand complex and repetitive tasks for the collection of data – and call for a more ethical, critical, and meaningful use of these new potential technologies, and for greater awareness of our new civic responsibilities