Gamification of Citizen Sensing through Mobile Social Reporting

David Crowley Karen Young

Peter CorcoranJohn Breslin

Citizen Sensing

“an interconnected network of people who actively observe, report, collect, analyze, and disseminate information via text, audio or video messages”

- Amit Sheth

Citizen Sensing

“network of human sensors has over 6 billioncomponents, each an intelligent synthesizer andinterpreter of local information”

- M.F. Goodchild

Humans as Sensors

• machines are good at symbolic processing but poor at perception

• machines good at continuous, long-term sensing but humans can contextualize, discriminate, and filter

• Learning, adapting, and experience

Social Report(er)ing

• Members of a community reporting issues– Rubbish/Litter– Graffiti– Amenity Issues– Paths/Sidewalk

• Reporting Websites– FixMyStreet (UK)– SeeClickFix (USA)– FixMyArea (Ireland)

Mobile

• Ease of posting of reports• Removes barriers• Smartphones (and sensors)– GPS and cell location– Camera– Compass (direction)– Noise levels

Design & Social Gaming

• Short attention time• Limited time to “hook” users• Fun• Cooperative and yet competitive• Socially motivated• Low cognitive load• Fast, Simple, and Minimal

Gamification

• Points for reports• Reports can be voted up or down

(importance/relevance to the community)• Reports of identical issues gain points for

reporter and original reporter

• And get points for applying fixes (verified)

Gamification

• Status• Access• Power• Stuff

- Zichermann et al 2011

S.A.P.S.

• Status (Rank)– Relative position of an individual in relation to others

(especially in a social group).

– Badges – Levels and Leaderboads - shows status and level of

achievement obtained by players

S.A.P.S.

• Access– Early access to promotions/products or sales

• Power– Giving players extra control over other players -

moderators - in some ways gets players to work for free

• Stuff– Freebies!

And to make it more social….group fixing!

And then fix even bigger problems…..

Future Work

• Design • User study• Private Beta• Verification of Reports and Fixes• User group study to measure success of

Gamification elements• Transfer Gamification elements to other social

mobile applications