This document summarizes a study that evaluated a gamified mobile application called Biotracker, which collects plant phenology data from citizen scientists. The study aimed to see if Biotracker could engage Millennial technology enthusiasts as new citizen science volunteers. 71 undergraduates used and provided feedback on an advanced prototype of Biotracker. Results suggested gamification was key to attracting Millennials, as were social motivations and education. Potential benefits to participants included increased awareness of community and knowledge of plant biology.
2015 was an eventful year for Pulse Lab Jakarta. The broader data innovation ecosystem within which the Lab operates has grown from a specialist network to include a broader range of public, social, and private sector actors who are interested in exploring insights from new data sources as well as learning how data innovation can complement existing datasets and operations. This report provides an overview of the work of Pulse Lab Jakarta in 2015, including the foundation blocks that will lead to an impactful 2016.
This toolkit provides the methodology for focusing the data-gathering power of existing communities, increasing their capacity to work together and building awareness of the potential of the data created by this work. It aims to help citizens identify and articulate their own problems using the supplementing data in their communities.
Big Data, Social Networks & Human Behavior (Jukka-Pekka Onnela)UN Global Pulse
Presentation by Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University's School of Public Health. Presented at roundtable on "BIg Data for Development" hosted by Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the United Nations (www.unglobalpulse.org).
Big Data for Development: Opportunities and Challenges, Summary SlidedeckUN Global Pulse
Summary points from UN Global Pulse White Paper "Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges." See: http://www.unglobalpulse.org/BigDataforDevelopment
Invited talk presented by Hemant Purohit (http://knoesis.org/researchers/hemant) at the NCSU workshop on IT for sustainable tourism development. The talk presents application of technology developed for crisis coordination into more general marketplace coordination via social media for helping suppliers (micro-entrepreneurs) and demanders (tourists).
Global Pulse is playing a leading role in helping UN and other development partners adopt more agile processes powered by Big Data to meet the challenges of driving sustainable development in a Post-2015 world. Our initiative has been closely involved in shaping the discussion of a Post-2015 development “data revolution.”
Over the past year, we have focused our efforts on advocating for the responsible use of Big Data, building partnerships for access to real-time data sources, cutting edge data mining tools and data science expertise. At the country level, we continued to expand our network of Pulse Labs to strengthen national and regional capacity for using Big Data. We are pleased to have begun operating our first regional innovation hub in the vibrant East African technology scene with the opening of Pulse Lab Kampala in late 2013. In 2013, our portfolio of innovation projects involved more than 25 partner organizations including UNICEF, UN Development Programme (UNDP), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Annual Report 2013 summarizes this activity and explains how the UN's data science labs operate and innovate.
"Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges” - UN Global PulseUN Global Pulse
Presentation from UN Global Pulse event to launch a new white paper "BIg Data for Development: Challenges and Opportunities" on July 10, 2012 event at UN Headquarters.
Details, and webcast, of the event can be found at: http://unglobalpulse.org/bd4dwebcast
OTOinsights "An Analysis of Digg.com Engagement and User Behavior"One to One
This study presents an analysis of user engagement with social media via Digg.com. Understanding the behavior of Digg.com users will help marketers to better represent and promote their material on Digg.com as well as provide insights into the practices of social media users in general.
2015 was an eventful year for Pulse Lab Jakarta. The broader data innovation ecosystem within which the Lab operates has grown from a specialist network to include a broader range of public, social, and private sector actors who are interested in exploring insights from new data sources as well as learning how data innovation can complement existing datasets and operations. This report provides an overview of the work of Pulse Lab Jakarta in 2015, including the foundation blocks that will lead to an impactful 2016.
This toolkit provides the methodology for focusing the data-gathering power of existing communities, increasing their capacity to work together and building awareness of the potential of the data created by this work. It aims to help citizens identify and articulate their own problems using the supplementing data in their communities.
Big Data, Social Networks & Human Behavior (Jukka-Pekka Onnela)UN Global Pulse
Presentation by Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard University's School of Public Health. Presented at roundtable on "BIg Data for Development" hosted by Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the United Nations (www.unglobalpulse.org).
Big Data for Development: Opportunities and Challenges, Summary SlidedeckUN Global Pulse
Summary points from UN Global Pulse White Paper "Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges." See: http://www.unglobalpulse.org/BigDataforDevelopment
Invited talk presented by Hemant Purohit (http://knoesis.org/researchers/hemant) at the NCSU workshop on IT for sustainable tourism development. The talk presents application of technology developed for crisis coordination into more general marketplace coordination via social media for helping suppliers (micro-entrepreneurs) and demanders (tourists).
Global Pulse is playing a leading role in helping UN and other development partners adopt more agile processes powered by Big Data to meet the challenges of driving sustainable development in a Post-2015 world. Our initiative has been closely involved in shaping the discussion of a Post-2015 development “data revolution.”
Over the past year, we have focused our efforts on advocating for the responsible use of Big Data, building partnerships for access to real-time data sources, cutting edge data mining tools and data science expertise. At the country level, we continued to expand our network of Pulse Labs to strengthen national and regional capacity for using Big Data. We are pleased to have begun operating our first regional innovation hub in the vibrant East African technology scene with the opening of Pulse Lab Kampala in late 2013. In 2013, our portfolio of innovation projects involved more than 25 partner organizations including UNICEF, UN Development Programme (UNDP), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Annual Report 2013 summarizes this activity and explains how the UN's data science labs operate and innovate.
"Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges” - UN Global PulseUN Global Pulse
Presentation from UN Global Pulse event to launch a new white paper "BIg Data for Development: Challenges and Opportunities" on July 10, 2012 event at UN Headquarters.
Details, and webcast, of the event can be found at: http://unglobalpulse.org/bd4dwebcast
OTOinsights "An Analysis of Digg.com Engagement and User Behavior"One to One
This study presents an analysis of user engagement with social media via Digg.com. Understanding the behavior of Digg.com users will help marketers to better represent and promote their material on Digg.com as well as provide insights into the practices of social media users in general.
Computer vision techniques are combined with mobile technologies and citizen science to create projects under the umbrella of BIOTRACKER. These projects like Odd Leaf Out use computer games to engage people in identifying plant species and detecting errors in large image databases, improving image clustering and labeling. Active Image Clustering involves finding the best image pair for humans to label to maximize the expected change in the clustering. Experiments show this active approach outperforms passive clustering on leaf and face datasets.
This document introduces PLACE, an iterative mixed-fidelity prototyping approach for developing location-based apps and games. PLACE stands for Prototyping Location, Activities, Collective experience, and Experience over time. It consists of 6 design principles: start with low-fidelity prototypes and scale up fidelity, involve participants as co-designers, test prototypes in representative spaces, focus on in-game activities, respect authentic social experiences, and authentically represent the passage of time. The effectiveness of PLACE is evaluated through the development of Floracaching, a citizen science game. This reveals best practices for PLACE, insights it provides, and how it compares to other prototyping methods.
1. The document describes a study that co-designed a mobile citizen science game called Floracaching to appeal to both naturalists and gamers.
2. It found that both groups valued social interactions but differed in their perceptions of gamification, preferences for guidance versus autonomy, and desires for integration into daily life or enrichment activities.
3. The study concluded that successful citizen science apps should include elements of gamification and social interactions to appeal to all users, but provide more guidance and opportunities for integration into daily routines to appeal specifically to gamers, and allow for more autonomy and enrichment activities to appeal specifically to naturalists.
Dana Rotman defended her Ph.D. dissertation on examining the motivations and cultures of volunteers participating in collaborative scientific projects in different countries. She conducted case studies of projects in the United States, India, and Costa Rica, surveying and interviewing volunteers. The findings showed that volunteers' motivations can change over time and are influenced by culture. In the US, motivations were primarily self-directed while in Costa Rica they were more collective. India showed a mix of both. Culture also impacted collaboration cycles, with potential attrition points varying between countries. The study provided insights into sustaining long-term volunteer participation across cultures.
Dynamic Changes in Motivation in Collaborative Citizen-Science Projects Harish Vaidyanathan
This document summarizes findings from a study on motivational factors that affect participation in citizen science projects. It finds that volunteers are motivated by a complex framework of factors that change throughout their involvement in a project. Their motivation is affected by personal interests as well as external factors like attribution. Scientists value altruism and upholding principles highly as motivators, but value how participation benefits their own work or community less. Understanding motivational shifts is important for designing systems that facilitate collaboration between scientists and volunteers.
This game called Odd Leaf Out aims to identify misclassified images in a large database of labeled leaf images. Players are shown 6 leaf images and must select the image that does not belong, which is from a different plant species than the others. When players make mistakes, it helps identify errors in the initial image classifications. The game was found to identify mislabeled leaves more quickly than computer vision alone. Both domain experts and novices performed well, though experts enjoyed it more. The game demonstrates a novel approach of learning from player mistakes to improve image datasets.
The document outlines the key entry points and process for a user experience (UX) project, including:
1) Understanding the business, conducting opportunity evaluations, validating ideas, and developing a product vision.
2) A UX design process involving understanding requirements, auditing the existing experience, researching users, planning, functional design, visual design, and development.
3) Descriptions of each stage in the process from understanding to development and delivery.
Cultivating citizen scientists studied how working alone or in pairs and type of feedback influences motivation and contributions to citizen science projects. Volunteers participated in a simulated one-month project to observe trees and birds on campus. Working in pairs increased intrinsic motivation in week 3 but positive directive feedback increased it in week 4. Data quantity was higher when working in pairs for easy tree tasks in week 3, and when receiving positive feedback for both easy and difficult tasks in week 4. Interviews found working in pairs provided discussion and motivation while working alone allowed for individual focus. The study implications are that citizen science project design should consider volunteers' social context, task difficulties, and providing feedback.
Supporting Content Curation Communities: The Case of the Encyclopedia of LifeHarish Vaidyanathan
This document discusses content curation communities, which aim to aggregate existing content from various sources into a single repository. It uses the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) as a case study of a large-scale content curation community. The key challenges identified for EOL include integrating information from multiple sources with varying quality and formats, and establishing credibility and collaboration between experts and novices within the scientific community. Recommendations to address these challenges include technical, content, and social design choices to improve information and social integration for content curation communities.
This document discusses challenges in prototyping social, location-based mobile games and proposes low-fidelity prototyping techniques to address them. It outlines how to condense location, time, and social experience for prototyping purposes. Specific techniques mentioned include bodystorming in natural contexts, representing time through turn-taking or delays, and staging social interactions with multiple testers or automated roles. The authors plan to test prototyping methods for their Floracaching game to collect data on species and motivate citizen science.
The document discusses organizational behavior and why it is important. It defines organizational behavior as the study of individuals and groups in organizations, emphasizing high performance. It notes that organizational behavior occurs in a global context and involves dimensions of individual/group behavior and organizational processes. Valuing diversity is a core theme of organizational behavior. Organizational learning is important and involves acquiring knowledge to adapt to changing circumstances. Understanding organizational behavior requires studying individuals, groups/teams, and organizational processes.
This document summarizes key concepts from an introduction to organizational behavior course. It defines organizational behavior as the study of human behavior in organizational settings and how it interfaces with the organization. It discusses different models of OB and the major contributing disciplines. It also summarizes several seminal studies including the Hawthorne experiments which highlighted the importance of social and psychological factors in organizations.
This document summarizes a study that tested different motivational strategies for engaging people to collect environmental data using mobile apps. The study compared three apps created for a campaign to reduce energy waste from open shop doors: 1) a control app with no extra motivators, 2) an app using gamification techniques like points and leaderboards, and 3) an app offering financial incentives. The gamification app increased data collection but not significantly, while financial rewards significantly increased the amount of data collected. The study provided evidence that extrinsic motivators can more effectively engage people in pro-environmental data collection than intrinsic interest alone.
An Exploration of Volunteered Geographic Information stakeholdersChristopher J. Parker
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has huge potential for influencing the use of geographic information systems. However, there is a wide range of individuals involved in this process, each with their own motivations for contributing and using volunteered data. This paper investigates the range of stakeholders involved with VGI, their relationships and the main tensions and issues involved. The research was based on a series of detailed interviews and theory-driven coding of data. From this, a Rich Picture (Monk, Howard 1998) was developed to graphically present and relate stakeholder relationship information. The findings have implications for how stakeholder groups may be described, and how VGI can lead to enhanced products and services.
PARKER, C.J., 2010. An Exploration of Volunteered Geographic Information Stakeholders, M. HAKLAY, J. MORLEY and H. RAHEMTULLA, eds. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference, 14-16 April 2010 2010, UCL pp137-142.
Citation: O Riordan, N. 2013. An initial exploration of Citizen Science. NUIG Whitaker Institute Working Paper Series.
A working paper summarising the latest research on citizen science and its relationship with open innovation and the wisdom of crowds. Considers well known cases of citizen science including Galaxy Zoo. Identifies key research questions for future study.
Citizen science projects address important issues like biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change. Four studies on citizen science volunteer motivation found that:
1) Initial participation is often self-motivated, while continued involvement requires feedback from scientists;
2) Gamification can motivate different age groups, but tasks and guidance must match experiences; and
3) Positive corrective feedback improves contributions more than simple thanks.
4) Crowdsourcing design garnered useful feedback from engaged stakeholders, while technology needs to be intuitive and support data collection.
Towards Decision Support and Goal AchievementIdentifying Ac.docxturveycharlyn
Towards Decision Support and Goal Achievement:
Identifying Action-Outcome Relationships From Social
Media
Emre Kıcıman
Microsoft Research
[email protected]
Matthew Richardson
Microsoft Research
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Every day, people take actions, trying to achieve their per-
sonal, high-order goals. People decide what actions to take
based on their personal experience, knowledge and gut in-
stinct. While this leads to positive outcomes for some peo-
ple, many others do not have the necessary experience, knowl-
edge and instinct to make good decisions. What if, rather
than making decisions based solely on their own personal
experience, people could take advantage of the reported ex-
periences of hundreds of millions of other people?
In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of mining the
relationship between actions and their outcomes from the
aggregated timelines of individuals posting experiential mi-
croblog reports. Our contributions include an architecture
for extracting action-outcome relationships from social me-
dia data, techniques for identifying experiential social media
messages and converting them to event timelines, and an
analysis and evaluation of action-outcome extraction in case
studies.
1. INTRODUCTION
While current structured knowledge bases (e.g., Freebase)
contain a sizeable collection of information about entities,
from celebrities and locations to concepts and common ob-
jects, there is a class of knowledge that has minimal cov-
erage: actions. Simple information about common actions,
such as the effect of eating pasta before running a marathon,
or the consequences of adopting a puppy, are missing. While
some of this information may be found within the free text of
Wikipedia articles, the lack of a structured or semi-structured
representation make it largely unavailable for computational
usage. With computing devices continuing to become more
embedded in our everyday lives, and mediating an increasing
degree of our interactions with both the digital and physical
world, knowledge bases that can enable our computing de-
vices to represent and evaluate actions and their likely out-
comes can help individuals reason about actions and their
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the
author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
KDD’15, August 10-13, 2015, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3664-2/15/08 ...$15.00.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145 ...
Slides from Susanne Hecker and Muki Haklay talk in an ECSA webinar about the ECSA Characteristics of Citizen science https://zenodo.org/communities/citscicharacteristics/ - covering the methodology and the main features of the document. The webinar is available here https://zenodo.org/record/3859970
Presenting a new, clear approach to defining neogeography and its various elements, understanding the stakeholders in VGI and researching how volunteered information may benefit users over and above traditional cartography.
ANALYSIS OF GAMIFICATION ELEMENTS TO EXPLORE MISINFORMATION SHARING BASED ON ...ijseajournal
Gamification elements provide apersonal drive to urge user experience, emotion, fun, and engagement, positively or negatively. These gamification elements mayhave beenunintentionallyemployedthroughthe designand implementation processof social media platforms toencourage users’ behaviour towards misinformationsharing. This study intends to answer the subsequent question” What are the mostly used gamification elements that couldpossibly encourage usersto share misinformation on social media platforms?”. The study empirically investigatesthe usage of gamification elements and their relation to U&G theorywith 286 participants. The results indicated that gamification elements usage scored highwith regard tothe self-expression perspective (frequency=216), as well as theinteraction& collaborations perspective (frequency=198). whereas, the information seeking perspective scored low (frequency=59) and leaderboard were the least usage(frequency=43). The results may be useful to guide software engineering, developers, GUI specialists to cater for design elements settings and their possible negative effects in social media contexts.
Mobile Age: Open Data Mobile Apps to Support Independent LivingMobile Age Project
We present design insights for developing mobile services for senior citizens which have emerged through substantive engagement with end users and other stakeholders. We describe the aims of the Mobile Age project, and the ideas and rationale for applications that have emerged through a co-creation process. A trusted data platform is proposed along with apps that bring open data and mobile technology to work for an underserved population.
Christopher N. Bull
Will Simm
Bran Knowles
Oliver Bates
Nigel Davies
School of Computing and
Communications,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster, UK
c.bull@lancaster.ac.uk
branknowles9@gmail.com
w.simm@lancaster.ac.uk
o.bates@lancaster.ac.uk
n.a.davies@lancaster.ac.uk
Anindita Banerjee
Lucas Introna
Niall Hayes
Centre for the Study of Technology
and Organisation,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster, UK
a.banerjee2@lancaster.ac.uk
n.hayes@lancaster.ac.uk
l.introna@lancaster.ac.uk
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other
uses, contact the Owner/Author.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
CHI'17 Extended Abstracts, May 06-11, 2017, Denver, CO, USA
ACM 978-1-4503-4656-6/17/05.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053244
Computer vision techniques are combined with mobile technologies and citizen science to create projects under the umbrella of BIOTRACKER. These projects like Odd Leaf Out use computer games to engage people in identifying plant species and detecting errors in large image databases, improving image clustering and labeling. Active Image Clustering involves finding the best image pair for humans to label to maximize the expected change in the clustering. Experiments show this active approach outperforms passive clustering on leaf and face datasets.
This document introduces PLACE, an iterative mixed-fidelity prototyping approach for developing location-based apps and games. PLACE stands for Prototyping Location, Activities, Collective experience, and Experience over time. It consists of 6 design principles: start with low-fidelity prototypes and scale up fidelity, involve participants as co-designers, test prototypes in representative spaces, focus on in-game activities, respect authentic social experiences, and authentically represent the passage of time. The effectiveness of PLACE is evaluated through the development of Floracaching, a citizen science game. This reveals best practices for PLACE, insights it provides, and how it compares to other prototyping methods.
1. The document describes a study that co-designed a mobile citizen science game called Floracaching to appeal to both naturalists and gamers.
2. It found that both groups valued social interactions but differed in their perceptions of gamification, preferences for guidance versus autonomy, and desires for integration into daily life or enrichment activities.
3. The study concluded that successful citizen science apps should include elements of gamification and social interactions to appeal to all users, but provide more guidance and opportunities for integration into daily routines to appeal specifically to gamers, and allow for more autonomy and enrichment activities to appeal specifically to naturalists.
Dana Rotman defended her Ph.D. dissertation on examining the motivations and cultures of volunteers participating in collaborative scientific projects in different countries. She conducted case studies of projects in the United States, India, and Costa Rica, surveying and interviewing volunteers. The findings showed that volunteers' motivations can change over time and are influenced by culture. In the US, motivations were primarily self-directed while in Costa Rica they were more collective. India showed a mix of both. Culture also impacted collaboration cycles, with potential attrition points varying between countries. The study provided insights into sustaining long-term volunteer participation across cultures.
Dynamic Changes in Motivation in Collaborative Citizen-Science Projects Harish Vaidyanathan
This document summarizes findings from a study on motivational factors that affect participation in citizen science projects. It finds that volunteers are motivated by a complex framework of factors that change throughout their involvement in a project. Their motivation is affected by personal interests as well as external factors like attribution. Scientists value altruism and upholding principles highly as motivators, but value how participation benefits their own work or community less. Understanding motivational shifts is important for designing systems that facilitate collaboration between scientists and volunteers.
This game called Odd Leaf Out aims to identify misclassified images in a large database of labeled leaf images. Players are shown 6 leaf images and must select the image that does not belong, which is from a different plant species than the others. When players make mistakes, it helps identify errors in the initial image classifications. The game was found to identify mislabeled leaves more quickly than computer vision alone. Both domain experts and novices performed well, though experts enjoyed it more. The game demonstrates a novel approach of learning from player mistakes to improve image datasets.
The document outlines the key entry points and process for a user experience (UX) project, including:
1) Understanding the business, conducting opportunity evaluations, validating ideas, and developing a product vision.
2) A UX design process involving understanding requirements, auditing the existing experience, researching users, planning, functional design, visual design, and development.
3) Descriptions of each stage in the process from understanding to development and delivery.
Cultivating citizen scientists studied how working alone or in pairs and type of feedback influences motivation and contributions to citizen science projects. Volunteers participated in a simulated one-month project to observe trees and birds on campus. Working in pairs increased intrinsic motivation in week 3 but positive directive feedback increased it in week 4. Data quantity was higher when working in pairs for easy tree tasks in week 3, and when receiving positive feedback for both easy and difficult tasks in week 4. Interviews found working in pairs provided discussion and motivation while working alone allowed for individual focus. The study implications are that citizen science project design should consider volunteers' social context, task difficulties, and providing feedback.
Supporting Content Curation Communities: The Case of the Encyclopedia of LifeHarish Vaidyanathan
This document discusses content curation communities, which aim to aggregate existing content from various sources into a single repository. It uses the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) as a case study of a large-scale content curation community. The key challenges identified for EOL include integrating information from multiple sources with varying quality and formats, and establishing credibility and collaboration between experts and novices within the scientific community. Recommendations to address these challenges include technical, content, and social design choices to improve information and social integration for content curation communities.
This document discusses challenges in prototyping social, location-based mobile games and proposes low-fidelity prototyping techniques to address them. It outlines how to condense location, time, and social experience for prototyping purposes. Specific techniques mentioned include bodystorming in natural contexts, representing time through turn-taking or delays, and staging social interactions with multiple testers or automated roles. The authors plan to test prototyping methods for their Floracaching game to collect data on species and motivate citizen science.
The document discusses organizational behavior and why it is important. It defines organizational behavior as the study of individuals and groups in organizations, emphasizing high performance. It notes that organizational behavior occurs in a global context and involves dimensions of individual/group behavior and organizational processes. Valuing diversity is a core theme of organizational behavior. Organizational learning is important and involves acquiring knowledge to adapt to changing circumstances. Understanding organizational behavior requires studying individuals, groups/teams, and organizational processes.
This document summarizes key concepts from an introduction to organizational behavior course. It defines organizational behavior as the study of human behavior in organizational settings and how it interfaces with the organization. It discusses different models of OB and the major contributing disciplines. It also summarizes several seminal studies including the Hawthorne experiments which highlighted the importance of social and psychological factors in organizations.
This document summarizes a study that tested different motivational strategies for engaging people to collect environmental data using mobile apps. The study compared three apps created for a campaign to reduce energy waste from open shop doors: 1) a control app with no extra motivators, 2) an app using gamification techniques like points and leaderboards, and 3) an app offering financial incentives. The gamification app increased data collection but not significantly, while financial rewards significantly increased the amount of data collected. The study provided evidence that extrinsic motivators can more effectively engage people in pro-environmental data collection than intrinsic interest alone.
An Exploration of Volunteered Geographic Information stakeholdersChristopher J. Parker
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has huge potential for influencing the use of geographic information systems. However, there is a wide range of individuals involved in this process, each with their own motivations for contributing and using volunteered data. This paper investigates the range of stakeholders involved with VGI, their relationships and the main tensions and issues involved. The research was based on a series of detailed interviews and theory-driven coding of data. From this, a Rich Picture (Monk, Howard 1998) was developed to graphically present and relate stakeholder relationship information. The findings have implications for how stakeholder groups may be described, and how VGI can lead to enhanced products and services.
PARKER, C.J., 2010. An Exploration of Volunteered Geographic Information Stakeholders, M. HAKLAY, J. MORLEY and H. RAHEMTULLA, eds. In: Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference, 14-16 April 2010 2010, UCL pp137-142.
Citation: O Riordan, N. 2013. An initial exploration of Citizen Science. NUIG Whitaker Institute Working Paper Series.
A working paper summarising the latest research on citizen science and its relationship with open innovation and the wisdom of crowds. Considers well known cases of citizen science including Galaxy Zoo. Identifies key research questions for future study.
Citizen science projects address important issues like biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change. Four studies on citizen science volunteer motivation found that:
1) Initial participation is often self-motivated, while continued involvement requires feedback from scientists;
2) Gamification can motivate different age groups, but tasks and guidance must match experiences; and
3) Positive corrective feedback improves contributions more than simple thanks.
4) Crowdsourcing design garnered useful feedback from engaged stakeholders, while technology needs to be intuitive and support data collection.
Towards Decision Support and Goal AchievementIdentifying Ac.docxturveycharlyn
Towards Decision Support and Goal Achievement:
Identifying Action-Outcome Relationships From Social
Media
Emre Kıcıman
Microsoft Research
[email protected]
Matthew Richardson
Microsoft Research
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Every day, people take actions, trying to achieve their per-
sonal, high-order goals. People decide what actions to take
based on their personal experience, knowledge and gut in-
stinct. While this leads to positive outcomes for some peo-
ple, many others do not have the necessary experience, knowl-
edge and instinct to make good decisions. What if, rather
than making decisions based solely on their own personal
experience, people could take advantage of the reported ex-
periences of hundreds of millions of other people?
In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of mining the
relationship between actions and their outcomes from the
aggregated timelines of individuals posting experiential mi-
croblog reports. Our contributions include an architecture
for extracting action-outcome relationships from social me-
dia data, techniques for identifying experiential social media
messages and converting them to event timelines, and an
analysis and evaluation of action-outcome extraction in case
studies.
1. INTRODUCTION
While current structured knowledge bases (e.g., Freebase)
contain a sizeable collection of information about entities,
from celebrities and locations to concepts and common ob-
jects, there is a class of knowledge that has minimal cov-
erage: actions. Simple information about common actions,
such as the effect of eating pasta before running a marathon,
or the consequences of adopting a puppy, are missing. While
some of this information may be found within the free text of
Wikipedia articles, the lack of a structured or semi-structured
representation make it largely unavailable for computational
usage. With computing devices continuing to become more
embedded in our everyday lives, and mediating an increasing
degree of our interactions with both the digital and physical
world, knowledge bases that can enable our computing de-
vices to represent and evaluate actions and their likely out-
comes can help individuals reason about actions and their
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the
author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission
and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]
KDD’15, August 10-13, 2015, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM 978-1-4503-3664-2/15/08 ...$15.00.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145 ...
Slides from Susanne Hecker and Muki Haklay talk in an ECSA webinar about the ECSA Characteristics of Citizen science https://zenodo.org/communities/citscicharacteristics/ - covering the methodology and the main features of the document. The webinar is available here https://zenodo.org/record/3859970
Presenting a new, clear approach to defining neogeography and its various elements, understanding the stakeholders in VGI and researching how volunteered information may benefit users over and above traditional cartography.
ANALYSIS OF GAMIFICATION ELEMENTS TO EXPLORE MISINFORMATION SHARING BASED ON ...ijseajournal
Gamification elements provide apersonal drive to urge user experience, emotion, fun, and engagement, positively or negatively. These gamification elements mayhave beenunintentionallyemployedthroughthe designand implementation processof social media platforms toencourage users’ behaviour towards misinformationsharing. This study intends to answer the subsequent question” What are the mostly used gamification elements that couldpossibly encourage usersto share misinformation on social media platforms?”. The study empirically investigatesthe usage of gamification elements and their relation to U&G theorywith 286 participants. The results indicated that gamification elements usage scored highwith regard tothe self-expression perspective (frequency=216), as well as theinteraction& collaborations perspective (frequency=198). whereas, the information seeking perspective scored low (frequency=59) and leaderboard were the least usage(frequency=43). The results may be useful to guide software engineering, developers, GUI specialists to cater for design elements settings and their possible negative effects in social media contexts.
Mobile Age: Open Data Mobile Apps to Support Independent LivingMobile Age Project
We present design insights for developing mobile services for senior citizens which have emerged through substantive engagement with end users and other stakeholders. We describe the aims of the Mobile Age project, and the ideas and rationale for applications that have emerged through a co-creation process. A trusted data platform is proposed along with apps that bring open data and mobile technology to work for an underserved population.
Christopher N. Bull
Will Simm
Bran Knowles
Oliver Bates
Nigel Davies
School of Computing and
Communications,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster, UK
c.bull@lancaster.ac.uk
branknowles9@gmail.com
w.simm@lancaster.ac.uk
o.bates@lancaster.ac.uk
n.a.davies@lancaster.ac.uk
Anindita Banerjee
Lucas Introna
Niall Hayes
Centre for the Study of Technology
and Organisation,
Lancaster University,
Lancaster, UK
a.banerjee2@lancaster.ac.uk
n.hayes@lancaster.ac.uk
l.introna@lancaster.ac.uk
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other
uses, contact the Owner/Author.
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
CHI'17 Extended Abstracts, May 06-11, 2017, Denver, CO, USA
ACM 978-1-4503-4656-6/17/05.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053244
The ECSA Characteristics of Citizen ScienceMargaret Gold
An overview of the work and outcomes on the ECSA Characteristics of Citizen Science - full notes on https://zenodo.org/communities/citscicharacteristics
The document discusses utilizing weight allocation in a term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) environment to identify and remove noisy data from social media for improved customer segmentation and targeted advertising. Specifically, it aims to recognize keywords that can help cluster social media users based on demographics and behaviors while eliminating uninfluential data. The approach assigns higher weight to words that frequently appear in a document but rarely in the entire collection compared to common words.
Summary of the Impact of a Non-Fiction, Low Budget, Digital Social Media ProjectIJITE
This summary includes a synopsis of a 5-year social media exploratory project: non-fiction Facebook
advert plus a literature review to support the dissemination of the results relating to the technique and the
theme of 'making digital work'.
A digital marketing strategy ideally should incorporate a range of methods and budgets (qualitative and
quantitative in design) and this has been an aim of this work. To summarise, the 'reach' of 26 Facebook
posts (this included adverts and social messages: organic and non-organic design) for an approximate
£50.00 budget resulted in 6,239 people (reach/saw the advert) outside of Britain. The impact is the
primary data ‘reach’ results for this project. Collectively, by 2024, the primary and secondary methods
provided a result of 86,860 findings.
Synergizing Natural and Research CommunitiesTom De Ruyck
Research panels are facing declining response rates and decreased motivation for participation. As an alternative, researchers are exploring the use of social media as it provides a new stream of freely available consumer information through methods like social media netnography. However, user-generated social media content should be treated with caution, learning from mistakes of the past. The document discusses creating a "win-win-win" situation for researchers, clients, and research participants by combining social media netnography with online research communities in a respectful, ethical manner.
Synergizing natural and research communities: Caring about the research ecosy...InSites Consulting
Research panels are under pressure due to declining response rates to traditional surveys. Researchers need alternatives to learn about consumer attitudes and behavior. This document discusses using social media netnography and online research communities as alternatives. It proposes a connected research philosophy to create a win-win-win for the research agency, client, and consumer. It details a research design combining social media analysis, an online community recruited from a relevant social media site, and a consumer survey about social media research. The results found value for the client in unexpected insights and understanding consumer language.
Designing a Survey Study to Measure the Diversity of Digital Learners IJITE
This article describes the design of a quantitative study that aims to gather empirical data on the different
types of digital learners in a student population, inclusive of the elusive digital natives who purportedly
exist in settings laden with digital technology. The design of this study revolves on the impetus in mapping
the diversity of digital learners, followed by elucidations on the research design and methods that are to be
employed, its accompanying data analysis, ethical considerations and an elaboration of the measures that
are taken in ensuring validity and reliability.
Designing a Survey Study to Measure the Diversity of Digital LearnersIJITE
This article describes the design of a quantitative study that aims to gather empirical data on the different
types of digital learners in a student population, inclusive of the elusive digital natives who purportedly
exist in settings laden with digital technology. The design of this study revolves on the impetus in mapping
the diversity of digital learners, followed by elucidations on the research design and methods that are to be
employed, its accompanying data analysis, ethical considerations and an elaboration of the measures that
are taken in ensuring validity and reliability.
This document discusses citizen science and its application in classroom settings. It begins by defining citizen science as involving non-scientists in scientific research projects to generate new knowledge. It then discusses benefits of engaging students in citizen science, such as increasing engagement and connecting science learning to real-world issues. Several examples of citizen science projects are provided that students could participate in. The document emphasizes the importance of collaborating with external partners and communities. It provides guidance on co-managing citizen science projects with communities.
This document discusses citizen science and distributed computation. It provides examples of citizen science projects that involve volunteers collecting and reporting environmental data to help scientists study changes over broad areas and long periods. These projects employ distributed systems to facilitate communication between scientists and volunteers and to share and analyze the collected data. The document emphasizes that citizen science can further scientific understanding while also promoting science literacy among the public.
WSI Stimulus Project: Centre for longitudinal studies of online citizen parti...Ramine Tinati
This document summarizes a mid-term presentation on a project to establish a centre for longitudinal studies of online citizen participation systems. The project aims to improve research in this area through activities like performing a literature review of citizen science methods, reviewing existing citizen science platforms, and developing a citizen science data collection toolkit. Initial findings show citizen science activity is predominantly located in western countries. The project also examines player interactions on the EyeWire citizen science platform using mixed methods. Long term goals include providing a research data catalogue and establishing the University of Southampton as a hub for citizen science studies.
The document discusses the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) project. It provides statistics on EOL including over 1.5 million pages of content from 242 partners, over 1.5 million images, and over 2.8 million articles contributed by 1,225 curators. EOL aims to be a freely accessible portal providing information on all known species in a common format and growing as new species are discovered.
Floracaching is a mobile app that gamifies citizen science by having users collect plant phenology data. It allows users to create and check-in at "floracaches", which are specific mapped plants. When checking in, users report on the plant's state, comment, and take photos. The app was co-designed over six iterations with 58 participants to understand how to engage both citizen scientists, called "natures", and gamers. Key differences between these groups include natures preferring autonomy while gamers want guidance, and gamers seeking varied challenges while natures prefer tasks applying their domain knowledge. An evaluation found those who would use Floracaching were more motivated by it being fun and a social activity compared
Floracaching is a mobile app that gamifies the process of collecting plant phenology data for citizen science. It allows users to create and check-in at "floracaches", which are specific mapped plants, by indicating their phenological state, commenting, and uploading photos. The app was co-designed over six iterations with 58 participants to engage both citizen scientists and gamers. Evaluations found that gamers preferred more guidance and challenges, while citizen scientists valued autonomy and applying domain knowledge. Floracaching was found to be more motivating to users by being fun and connecting them to a community.
This document summarizes Dana Rotman's Ph.D. defense that examined how culture and motivation influence volunteers in collaborative scientific projects in the US, India, and Costa Rica. The research found that self-directed motivations drove volunteers in the US and India, while collective motivations were most important in Costa Rica. Motivations can change over time through relationships. Culture strongly shapes motivation and participation, with cultural barriers and support impacting involvement. A collaboration cycle shows how motivations, relationships, and culture interact to influence long-term participation.
This document describes a study of three citizen science projects: Mountain Watch, the Great Sunflower Project, and eBird. The study investigated how project design and implementation affect scientific outcomes by examining organizers' perspectives. Key findings included the influence of design approaches on science vs lifestyle engagement, implications of community engagement, relationships between technologies, environments and data quality, and how resources and scale impact sustainability and institutions. The research contributed a new theoretical model and comparative analysis of how technologies and processes can support public scientific participation.
This document describes PLACE, a scalable approach for prototyping location-based apps and games. PLACE has six key principles: 1) Start with low-fidelity prototypes and scale up fidelity, 2) Involve participants as co-designers, 3) Test prototypes in real-world representative spaces, 4) Focus on modeling user activities over interface design, 5) Respect authentic social experiences, and 6) Authentically represent time. The document evaluates PLACE through its use in prototyping a nature exploration game called Floracaching with plant experts and technology experts providing feedback in iterative design phases. Results showed that PLACE effectively supported prototyping location-based experiences through its mixed-fidelity and particip
Floracaching is a mobile app that gamifies the process of collecting plant phenology data for citizen science. It allows users to create and check-in at "floracaches", which are specific mapped plants, by indicating the plant's state and optionally commenting, photographing, and confirming identifications. The app was co-designed over six iterations with 58 participants to engage both citizen scientists and gamers. Key differences between these groups include gamers preferring more guidance while citizen scientists valued autonomy, and gamers seeking varied game activities while citizen scientists preferred challenges applying their domain knowledge. An evaluation found those who would use Floracaching were more motivated by factors like fun, social connection, and earning badges compared to those who
Floracaching is a gamified citizen science app that allows users to contribute plant data. It was evaluated with both citizen scientists ("natures") and gamers. While both groups enjoyed contributing to science, natures prioritized the scientific activities and tools, whereas gamers wanted more game elements like badges and achievements. To appeal to both, future apps should include a variety of scientific and game-focused activities that are enjoyable for different user types.
What attracts users to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)? - A pilot studyHarish Vaidyanathan
1) The document summarizes a pilot study that investigated whether the citizen science biodiversity website Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is successful in attracting potential users and retaining existing users.
2) Interviews with 10 students found the most attractive features of EOL were its beautiful interface, smartphone access, and interactive maps. However, iNaturalist was seen as more attractive overall based on the number of students who liked it versus disliked it.
3) Traffic data from 2010-2011 showed the number of EOL visits and visitors increased over that period and varied by season, suggesting the site retains existing users but could be more attractive to potential new users.
The PLACE approach prototypes location-based social games through low-fidelity methods. It uses field pointers connected to physical objects and a mobile QR code reader to direct users to a website mimicking application functionality. The approach considers prototyping activities, user motivations, and game dynamics more than interfaces. It scales initial small sessions to later larger sessions spanning locations to iteratively test designs.
Challenges of Mobile Phone-Based, GPS-Dependent Gaming for Citizen ScienceHarish Vaidyanathan
1) A mobile phone-based citizen science game called Floracaching that uses GPS to locate plants had issues with GPS inaccuracies reducing player engagement.
2) The GPS inaccuracies were common in urban environments due to signal blockage and reflections, incorrectly locating players up to 43 meters away from targets.
3) To address this, researchers implemented a manual location adjustment that allows players within 30 meters to adjust their position on a map, improving successful captures for tested players but not eliminating GPS issues entirely.
Low Fidelity Prototyping for Social, Location-based Game AppsHarish Vaidyanathan
This document discusses challenges in prototyping social, location-based mobile games and proposes low-fidelity prototyping techniques to address them. It outlines how to condense location, time, and social experience for prototyping purposes. Specific techniques mentioned include bodystorming in natural contexts, representing time through turn-taking or delays, and staging social interactions with multiple testers or automated roles. The authors plan to test prototyping methods for their game Floracaching to collect biodiversity data and inform future prototyping of social, location-based apps and games.
Active Image Clustering: Seeking Constraints from Humans to Complement Algori...Harish Vaidyanathan
This document proposes a method of active image clustering that combines algorithmic clustering with targeted human input. The method selects the most informative image pairs to present to a human for labeling whether they are in the same cluster or different clusters. It does this by calculating the expected change to the clustering if a human were to provide a constraint on each pair. The pairs that are most likely to significantly change the clustering if constrained are selected. Experiments show this active clustering approach can improve clustering performance over fully algorithmic methods on face and leaf image datasets.
Visually Exploring Social Participation in Encyclopedia of LifeHarish Vaidyanathan
This document discusses visually exploring social participation on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) citizen science platform. It analyzes the conversation network of EOL users over time using dynamic network visualization methods. The analysis found that new website features increased interactive and individual member activities, and that curator activities encouraged other members to be more active. Dynamic network visualization is useful for understanding how online social networks and participation evolve over time.
Biotracker: Melding Human and Machine Capabilities to Document the World's L...Harish Vaidyanathan
This document summarizes a research project that aims to meld human and machine capabilities to document the world's living organisms. It discusses using computer vision and mobile apps to identify plant species via photos. Citizen scientists and enthusiasts will help build digital collections and validate data via games. The goals are to direct human effort towards valuable tasks and assist species identification and classification. Field data collection games on mobile devices are being prototyped and tested.
Encyclopedia of Life: Motivating Public Enthusiasts and Expert Scientists to ...Harish Vaidyanathan
This document discusses motivating public enthusiasts and expert scientists to contribute to documenting the world's species on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) website. It finds that both scientists and volunteers are motivated by altruism and collectivism more so than egoism or principalism. Content curation communities like EOL face challenges with information and social integration that a more sophisticated model of volunteerism could help address. Future research will test interventions and games to motivate sustained volunteer involvement.
This document summarizes a game designed to combine human and computer vision to refine metadata for images. The game asks players to identify which leaf in a set is different. It was designed to be easy enough to not require expertise, but still provide useful data to researchers. A trial using Mechanical Turk found that players found the game enjoyable and were able to correctly identify leaves. The game aims to identify errors, test if color helps identification, and get feedback to improve the game experience.
This document summarizes research on building a latent social network from user contributions to the Encyclopedia of Life Flickr group. Researchers analyzed over 84,000 photos tagged with taxonomic information to discover implicit connections between users based on overlapping tags. The network was able to identify connectors between domains like birds/mammals and insects. Researchers then evaluated the network by contacting sample users, finding that several had real offline relationships and interactions around specific taxa. The network visualization also aims to show the evolution of connections over time to encourage further participation.
Low-fidelity Prototyping for Location-based, Social GamesHarish Vaidyanathan
The document describes the PLACE approach for prototyping location-based, social games and apps. PLACE stands for Prototyping Location, Activities, and Collective Experience. It involves starting with low-fidelity prototypes to test activities and experiences in real-world locations in small groups before scaling up to more participants. The approach was used to prototype Floracaching, a location-based citizen science game similar to Geocaching, where participants find and scan QR codes at outdoor locations to complete activities and earn badges.
This document summarizes research into motivational factors that affect volunteers and scientists' engagement in citizen science projects. It finds that scientists are primarily motivated by opportunities for education and outreach or fulfilling data needs, while volunteers are mostly motivated by personal interest. Secondary motivations for volunteers include recognition, attribution, community involvement, and advocacy. De-motivating factors include a lack of recognition from scientists or a lack of visible impact from collected data. The document proposes design recommendations to support motivation, such as emphasizing locality, breaking tasks into smaller pieces, and ensuring ongoing recognition and inclusion of volunteers.
HCL Notes and Domino License Cost Reduction in the World of DLAUpanagenda
Webinar Recording: https://www.panagenda.com/webinars/hcl-notes-and-domino-license-cost-reduction-in-the-world-of-dlau/
The introduction of DLAU and the CCB & CCX licensing model caused quite a stir in the HCL community. As a Notes and Domino customer, you may have faced challenges with unexpected user counts and license costs. You probably have questions on how this new licensing approach works and how to benefit from it. Most importantly, you likely have budget constraints and want to save money where possible. Don’t worry, we can help with all of this!
We’ll show you how to fix common misconfigurations that cause higher-than-expected user counts, and how to identify accounts which you can deactivate to save money. There are also frequent patterns that can cause unnecessary cost, like using a person document instead of a mail-in for shared mailboxes. We’ll provide examples and solutions for those as well. And naturally we’ll explain the new licensing model.
Join HCL Ambassador Marc Thomas in this webinar with a special guest appearance from Franz Walder. It will give you the tools and know-how to stay on top of what is going on with Domino licensing. You will be able lower your cost through an optimized configuration and keep it low going forward.
These topics will be covered
- Reducing license cost by finding and fixing misconfigurations and superfluous accounts
- How do CCB and CCX licenses really work?
- Understanding the DLAU tool and how to best utilize it
- Tips for common problem areas, like team mailboxes, functional/test users, etc
- Practical examples and best practices to implement right away
Best 20 SEO Techniques To Improve Website Visibility In SERPPixlogix Infotech
Boost your website's visibility with proven SEO techniques! Our latest blog dives into essential strategies to enhance your online presence, increase traffic, and rank higher on search engines. From keyword optimization to quality content creation, learn how to make your site stand out in the crowded digital landscape. Discover actionable tips and expert insights to elevate your SEO game.
Unlock the Future of Search with MongoDB Atlas_ Vector Search Unleashed.pdfMalak Abu Hammad
Discover how MongoDB Atlas and vector search technology can revolutionize your application's search capabilities. This comprehensive presentation covers:
* What is Vector Search?
* Importance and benefits of vector search
* Practical use cases across various industries
* Step-by-step implementation guide
* Live demos with code snippets
* Enhancing LLM capabilities with vector search
* Best practices and optimization strategies
Perfect for developers, AI enthusiasts, and tech leaders. Learn how to leverage MongoDB Atlas to deliver highly relevant, context-aware search results, transforming your data retrieval process. Stay ahead in tech innovation and maximize the potential of your applications.
#MongoDB #VectorSearch #AI #SemanticSearch #TechInnovation #DataScience #LLM #MachineLearning #SearchTechnology
GraphRAG for Life Science to increase LLM accuracyTomaz Bratanic
GraphRAG for life science domain, where you retriever information from biomedical knowledge graphs using LLMs to increase the accuracy and performance of generated answers
HCL Notes und Domino Lizenzkostenreduzierung in der Welt von DLAUpanagenda
Webinar Recording: https://www.panagenda.com/webinars/hcl-notes-und-domino-lizenzkostenreduzierung-in-der-welt-von-dlau/
DLAU und die Lizenzen nach dem CCB- und CCX-Modell sind für viele in der HCL-Community seit letztem Jahr ein heißes Thema. Als Notes- oder Domino-Kunde haben Sie vielleicht mit unerwartet hohen Benutzerzahlen und Lizenzgebühren zu kämpfen. Sie fragen sich vielleicht, wie diese neue Art der Lizenzierung funktioniert und welchen Nutzen sie Ihnen bringt. Vor allem wollen Sie sicherlich Ihr Budget einhalten und Kosten sparen, wo immer möglich. Das verstehen wir und wir möchten Ihnen dabei helfen!
Wir erklären Ihnen, wie Sie häufige Konfigurationsprobleme lösen können, die dazu führen können, dass mehr Benutzer gezählt werden als nötig, und wie Sie überflüssige oder ungenutzte Konten identifizieren und entfernen können, um Geld zu sparen. Es gibt auch einige Ansätze, die zu unnötigen Ausgaben führen können, z. B. wenn ein Personendokument anstelle eines Mail-Ins für geteilte Mailboxen verwendet wird. Wir zeigen Ihnen solche Fälle und deren Lösungen. Und natürlich erklären wir Ihnen das neue Lizenzmodell.
Nehmen Sie an diesem Webinar teil, bei dem HCL-Ambassador Marc Thomas und Gastredner Franz Walder Ihnen diese neue Welt näherbringen. Es vermittelt Ihnen die Tools und das Know-how, um den Überblick zu bewahren. Sie werden in der Lage sein, Ihre Kosten durch eine optimierte Domino-Konfiguration zu reduzieren und auch in Zukunft gering zu halten.
Diese Themen werden behandelt
- Reduzierung der Lizenzkosten durch Auffinden und Beheben von Fehlkonfigurationen und überflüssigen Konten
- Wie funktionieren CCB- und CCX-Lizenzen wirklich?
- Verstehen des DLAU-Tools und wie man es am besten nutzt
- Tipps für häufige Problembereiche, wie z. B. Team-Postfächer, Funktions-/Testbenutzer usw.
- Praxisbeispiele und Best Practices zum sofortigen Umsetzen
Driving Business Innovation: Latest Generative AI Advancements & Success StorySafe Software
Are you ready to revolutionize how you handle data? Join us for a webinar where we’ll bring you up to speed with the latest advancements in Generative AI technology and discover how leveraging FME with tools from giants like Google Gemini, Amazon, and Microsoft OpenAI can supercharge your workflow efficiency.
During the hour, we’ll take you through:
Guest Speaker Segment with Hannah Barrington: Dive into the world of dynamic real estate marketing with Hannah, the Marketing Manager at Workspace Group. Hear firsthand how their team generates engaging descriptions for thousands of office units by integrating diverse data sources—from PDF floorplans to web pages—using FME transformers, like OpenAIVisionConnector and AnthropicVisionConnector. This use case will show you how GenAI can streamline content creation for marketing across the board.
Ollama Use Case: Learn how Scenario Specialist Dmitri Bagh has utilized Ollama within FME to input data, create custom models, and enhance security protocols. This segment will include demos to illustrate the full capabilities of FME in AI-driven processes.
Custom AI Models: Discover how to leverage FME to build personalized AI models using your data. Whether it’s populating a model with local data for added security or integrating public AI tools, find out how FME facilitates a versatile and secure approach to AI.
We’ll wrap up with a live Q&A session where you can engage with our experts on your specific use cases, and learn more about optimizing your data workflows with AI.
This webinar is ideal for professionals seeking to harness the power of AI within their data management systems while ensuring high levels of customization and security. Whether you're a novice or an expert, gain actionable insights and strategies to elevate your data processes. Join us to see how FME and AI can revolutionize how you work with data!
5th LF Energy Power Grid Model Meet-up SlidesDanBrown980551
5th Power Grid Model Meet-up
It is with great pleasure that we extend to you an invitation to the 5th Power Grid Model Meet-up, scheduled for 6th June 2024. This event will adopt a hybrid format, allowing participants to join us either through an online Mircosoft Teams session or in person at TU/e located at Den Dolech 2, Eindhoven, Netherlands. The meet-up will be hosted by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), a research university specializing in engineering science & technology.
Power Grid Model
The global energy transition is placing new and unprecedented demands on Distribution System Operators (DSOs). Alongside upgrades to grid capacity, processes such as digitization, capacity optimization, and congestion management are becoming vital for delivering reliable services.
Power Grid Model is an open source project from Linux Foundation Energy and provides a calculation engine that is increasingly essential for DSOs. It offers a standards-based foundation enabling real-time power systems analysis, simulations of electrical power grids, and sophisticated what-if analysis. In addition, it enables in-depth studies and analysis of the electrical power grid’s behavior and performance. This comprehensive model incorporates essential factors such as power generation capacity, electrical losses, voltage levels, power flows, and system stability.
Power Grid Model is currently being applied in a wide variety of use cases, including grid planning, expansion, reliability, and congestion studies. It can also help in analyzing the impact of renewable energy integration, assessing the effects of disturbances or faults, and developing strategies for grid control and optimization.
What to expect
For the upcoming meetup we are organizing, we have an exciting lineup of activities planned:
-Insightful presentations covering two practical applications of the Power Grid Model.
-An update on the latest advancements in Power Grid -Model technology during the first and second quarters of 2024.
-An interactive brainstorming session to discuss and propose new feature requests.
-An opportunity to connect with fellow Power Grid Model enthusiasts and users.
Skybuffer AI: Advanced Conversational and Generative AI Solution on SAP Busin...Tatiana Kojar
Skybuffer AI, built on the robust SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), is the latest and most advanced version of our AI development, reaffirming our commitment to delivering top-tier AI solutions. Skybuffer AI harnesses all the innovative capabilities of the SAP BTP in the AI domain, from Conversational AI to cutting-edge Generative AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). It also helps SAP customers safeguard their investments into SAP Conversational AI and ensure a seamless, one-click transition to SAP Business AI.
With Skybuffer AI, various AI models can be integrated into a single communication channel such as Microsoft Teams. This integration empowers business users with insights drawn from SAP backend systems, enterprise documents, and the expansive knowledge of Generative AI. And the best part of it is that it is all managed through our intuitive no-code Action Server interface, requiring no extensive coding knowledge and making the advanced AI accessible to more users.
Ocean lotus Threat actors project by John Sitima 2024 (1).pptxSitimaJohn
Ocean Lotus cyber threat actors represent a sophisticated, persistent, and politically motivated group that poses a significant risk to organizations and individuals in the Southeast Asian region. Their continuous evolution and adaptability underscore the need for robust cybersecurity measures and international cooperation to identify and mitigate the threats posed by such advanced persistent threat groups.
Let's Integrate MuleSoft RPA, COMPOSER, APM with AWS IDP along with Slackshyamraj55
Discover the seamless integration of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), COMPOSER, and APM with AWS IDP enhanced with Slack notifications. Explore how these technologies converge to streamline workflows, optimize performance, and ensure secure access, all while leveraging the power of AWS IDP and real-time communication via Slack notifications.
TrustArc Webinar - 2024 Global Privacy SurveyTrustArc
How does your privacy program stack up against your peers? What challenges are privacy teams tackling and prioritizing in 2024?
In the fifth annual Global Privacy Benchmarks Survey, we asked over 1,800 global privacy professionals and business executives to share their perspectives on the current state of privacy inside and outside of their organizations. This year’s report focused on emerging areas of importance for privacy and compliance professionals, including considerations and implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, building brand trust, and different approaches for achieving higher privacy competence scores.
See how organizational priorities and strategic approaches to data security and privacy are evolving around the globe.
This webinar will review:
- The top 10 privacy insights from the fifth annual Global Privacy Benchmarks Survey
- The top challenges for privacy leaders, practitioners, and organizations in 2024
- Key themes to consider in developing and maintaining your privacy program
Programming Foundation Models with DSPy - Meetup SlidesZilliz
Prompting language models is hard, while programming language models is easy. In this talk, I will discuss the state-of-the-art framework DSPy for programming foundation models with its powerful optimizers and runtime constraint system.
Nunit vs XUnit vs MSTest Differences Between These Unit Testing Frameworks.pdfflufftailshop
When it comes to unit testing in the .NET ecosystem, developers have a wide range of options available. Among the most popular choices are NUnit, XUnit, and MSTest. These unit testing frameworks provide essential tools and features to help ensure the quality and reliability of code. However, understanding the differences between these frameworks is crucial for selecting the most suitable one for your projects.
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift.pdfTosin Akinosho
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift
Overview
Dive into the world of anomaly detection on edge devices with our comprehensive hands-on tutorial. This SlideShare presentation will guide you through the entire process, from data collection and model training to edge deployment and real-time monitoring. Perfect for those looking to implement robust anomaly detection systems on resource-constrained IoT/edge devices.
Key Topics Covered
1. Introduction to Anomaly Detection
- Understand the fundamentals of anomaly detection and its importance in identifying unusual behavior or failures in systems.
2. Understanding Edge (IoT)
- Learn about edge computing and IoT, and how they enable real-time data processing and decision-making at the source.
3. What is ArgoCD?
- Discover ArgoCD, a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, and its role in deploying applications on edge devices.
4. Deployment Using ArgoCD for Edge Devices
- Step-by-step guide on deploying anomaly detection models on edge devices using ArgoCD.
5. Introduction to Apache Kafka and S3
- Explore Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming and Amazon S3 for scalable storage solutions.
6. Viewing Kafka Messages in the Data Lake
- Learn how to view and analyze Kafka messages stored in a data lake for better insights.
7. What is Prometheus?
- Get to know Prometheus, an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit, and its application in monitoring edge devices.
8. Monitoring Application Metrics with Prometheus
- Detailed instructions on setting up Prometheus to monitor the performance and health of your anomaly detection system.
9. What is Camel K?
- Introduction to Camel K, a lightweight integration framework built on Apache Camel, designed for Kubernetes.
10. Configuring Camel K Integrations for Data Pipelines
- Learn how to configure Camel K for seamless data pipeline integrations in your anomaly detection workflow.
11. What is a Jupyter Notebook?
- Overview of Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source web application for creating and sharing documents with live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.
12. Jupyter Notebooks with Code Examples
- Hands-on examples and code snippets in Jupyter Notebooks to help you implement and test anomaly detection models.
Main news related to the CCS TSI 2023 (2023/1695)Jakub Marek
An English 🇬🇧 translation of a presentation to the speech I gave about the main changes brought by CCS TSI 2023 at the biggest Czech conference on Communications and signalling systems on Railways, which was held in Clarion Hotel Olomouc from 7th to 9th November 2023 (konferenceszt.cz). Attended by around 500 participants and 200 on-line followers.
The original Czech 🇨🇿 version of the presentation can be found here: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/hlavni-novinky-souvisejici-s-ccs-tsi-2023-2023-1695/269688092 .
The videorecording (in Czech) from the presentation is available here: https://youtu.be/WzjJWm4IyPk?si=SImb06tuXGb30BEH .
1. Using gamification to inspire new citizen science
volunteers
Anne Bowser1
, Derek Hansen2
, Yurong He1
, Carol Boston1
, Matthew Reid3
, Logan
Gunnell2
, Jennifer Preece1
University of Maryland
8082 Baltimore Avenue
College Park, MD 20740
abowser1@umd.edu
Brigham Young University
E Campus Drive
Provo, UT 84604
dlhansen@byu.edu
Pariveda Solutions
2811 McKinney Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204
matthewreid007@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Gamifying citizen science campaigns has the potential to
further engage existing volunteers, as well as to attract new
contributors. By evaluating Biotracker, a gamified mobile
application that gathers plant phenology data, we explored
the feasibility of engaging a secondary group of
Millennials, who are notorious technology enthusiasts, with
a gamified citizen science app. We also explored the
potential benefits that using an application might offer
these users. Results suggest that gamification is key to
attracting many Millennials, as are social motivations and,
to a lesser extent, education. Potential benefits to these
participants include an increased awareness of community
and an increase in domain knowledge.
Author Keywords
Gamification, location-based games, citizen science,
crowdsourcing, Biotracker, Project Budburst, Millennials
ACM Classification Keywords
K.8.0. General: Games
INTRODUCTION
Gamification is a powerful design tool with the potential to
enhance user experience and engagement with non-game
applications. While the canonical example of gamification
may be the use of badges by service marketing teams [18],
the motivational affordances of games are also utilized in
non-corporate contexts such as education [6], community
trading [14] and citizen sensing [7].
Citizen science is another promising context for
gamification. Specifically, researchers have identified
“rewards, such as online gaming badges and competitions”
as a promising method for motivating and retaining
volunteers [20]. Examples of extant projects that utilize
gamification in citizen science are Tiger Nation [19], which
tracks the movements of endangered tigers, and Happy
Sort, which classifies images of species such as moths and
sharks [24]. However, with those notable exceptions,
serious games (i.e., stand-alone games with a primary
purpose other than entertainment) such as Foldit
(http://fold.it/portal/) or Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org/)
are far more prevalent than gamified apps in the citizen
science domain. Since not all tasks lend themselves to the
creation of full games, understanding how to effectively
gamify citizen science apps is of great importance.
This paper reports on our experiences evaluating
Biotracker, a gamified mobile application for citizen
science. Biotracker was developed to feed plant phenology
data to the Project Budburst database (www.budburst.org);
as such, our primary user group is citizen scientists who
already contribute data to Project Budburst or similar
campaigns. By gamifying the Biotracker app, we hope to
engage this user group more fully, as well as attract a
secondary group of Millennials – the focus of this paper.
Engaging users who are not currently active citizen
scientists has several potential benefits. Additional data can
be collected for scientists. Volunteers may reap benefits
including an increased knowledge of the scientific method
and heightened community involvement [4]. Some critics
argue that gamification is a simple marketing tool that
manipulates users without their knowledge [2], so
establishing that benefits exist to the users of a gamified
app is a key ethical consideration in the design and
development of gamified mobile applications—especially
when these users might not be motivated to use an
application because of its content alone.
With these considerations in mind, we evaluated an
advanced prototype of the gamified Biotracker app with a
group of 71 undergraduates from the Millennial generation.
We address the following research questions:
• Can a gamified citizen science app engage
technology enthusiasts from the millennial
generation?
• Which aspects of the gamified app would be most
motivating to those who are likely to use it?
• What potential benefits could this group receive
from use of the gamified app?
Our work suggests that gamifying a mobile app for citizen
science does have the potential to engage Millennials.
These users express social motivations such as socialization
and community membership, motivations relating to
personal benefit such as fun and education, and motivations
relating to gamification such as competition and reward in
the form of badges earned. Potential sources of value for
these users include an increased awareness of community
and a growing knowledge of topics such as plant biology.
2. BACKGROUND
Gamification
One common definition of gamification is “the use of
elements of game design in non-game contexts” [10].
While this succinctly describes the method that
gamification deploys, other researchers choose to
emphasize the experience that gamification gives rise to.
Thus, a second definition considers gamification “a process
of enhancing a service with affordances for gameful
experiences in order to support user’s overall value
creation” [15]. Context is a third key to understanding
gamification: a user is motivated by a gamified system only
when gamification makes salient a user’s real, intrinsic
motivational needs [9]. Therefore, designers of gamified
apps should understand both the motivational affordances
of games and the domain of interest (e.g., citizen science).
Researchers have identified a number of motivations that
drive the users of gamified apps. People use gamified apps
because they are fun or relate to a personal interest [13].
They use these apps to socialize, whether social activities
are casual and temporary, contribute to longer-term
relationships, or evoke community membership [13, 16,
27]. Users of gamified apps are also motivated by the
opportunity to discover new things [27], to be part of a
meaningful story [13], to compete with others [27], and to
achieve one’s personal best [13, 28].
Citizen Science
Citizen science is a collaborative process in which
volunteers work with professional scientists to study real-
world problems [4]. Citizen science activities are often
structured around campaigns, where volunteers gather and
annotate a specific type of data. Some campaigns are
bounded by a specific time or place. ReClam the Bay
(www.reclamthebay.org) is seasonal and located around
Barnegat Beach, New Jersey. Other campaigns, such as
eBird (www.ebird.org), perpetually solicit data from citizen
scientists in diverse geographic zones.
Because citizen science facilitates efforts such as large-
scale data collection that would otherwise be impractical or
impossible, its value to scientists is clear. Its value to
volunteers is no less significant. Based on the Framework
for Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Education [12]
used by NSF-funded projects, researchers [4] identify a
number of benefits for citizen science volunteers. These
include increased knowledge of scientific content and
processes; increased engagement (e.g., with the scientific
community); skill development (e.g., study design);
improved attitudes toward science; increased time spent
outdoors, citizen action, and responsible environmental
behavior; and other impacts.
Motivations of citizen science volunteers are complex, and
change over time [26]. They include fun or personal
interest [21, 25, 26], the desire to learn more about a
subject [25], and the thrill of discovery [25]. Citizen
science volunteers appreciate the opportunity to be part of a
community [25, 26], although motivations for socialization
may exceed motivations for community recognition [21].
Volunteers exhibit altruistic motivations ranging from a
general desire to help [25], a desire to contribute to science
[21, 25], and a desire to help one’s community [26].
Table 1 summarizes the motivations of users of gamified
apps and citizen science volunteers outlined in the prior
sections. It is necessarily general and may not apply to
specific scenarios (e.g., educational games; competitive
citizen science activities), but it does illustrate that both
groups share some motivations, while differing in others.
Motivation Gamers
Cit. Sci.
Volunteers
Fun (intrinsically rewarding) X X
Personal interest X X
Learning or education X
Contributing to science X
Contributing to public good X
Community involvement X X
General socialization X X
Personal performance X
Competition with peers X
Table 1. Motivations of gamers and citizen scientists
METHODS
After describing the Biotracker app we explain the methods
used for this study. Note that prior work evaluated an
earlier prototype of Biotracker with different users [3].
The Biotracker app
Biotracker is a gamified mobile application designed to
gather plant phenology data for Project Budburst. Plant
phenology data measures the timing of events, such as
when a perennial begins to bud or when a tree’s leaves fall.
It is valuable to scientists who study the dissemination of
allergens and global climate change. Biotracker was
developed with PLACE, an iterative co-design approach to
Prototyping Location, Activities, and Collective Experience
over time, as detailed elsewhere [3].
In Biotracker, the central artifact that users interact with is
a floracache, or a plant (for example, a specific oak tree in
front of a college library) designated as part of the game.
Floracaches are mapped in the application so that any user
can find them. Biotracker supports two main types of
interaction: creating floracaches of new plants, and
checking into floracaches that already exist. Users who
create a floracache must visit, photograph, and identify a
plant, a task that requires some plant expertise. In contrast,
any Biotracker user with a location-enabled mobile device
can “check in” to existing floracaches. Checking in
involves three optional tasks. First, users check a box to
indicate the plant’s current phenological state, such as “all
leaves withered,” or “full flowering.” Second, users can
comment on an aspect of the floracache. Third, users can
photograph the floracache.
3. Several activities rely upon the two primitive types of
interaction: creating caches and checking into them.
Budding Scientist, one of the core activities, requires that
users check into a floracache and answer plant phenology
questions (e.g., is it blooming?). Invasive Patroller asks
users to create a cache of an invasive species; Friendly
Floracacher requires users to check in with another person.
Biotracker is gamified primarily through the use of badges
that are placed on the virtual profile pages of users (Figure
1). Each badge is associated with a different activity. For
example, users who complete the Budding Scientist activity
earn the Budding Scientist badge. Floracaching also
includes a leaderboard listing the ten players who have
checked into the most caches at any given time. When a
user hits the #1 spot on the leaderboard, he or she is
automatically awarded a Leader of the Pack badge. In this
way, players are rewarded for their general use of
Biotracker and for completing specific activities.
Participants
Millennials, or Americans born after 1980, are
characterized as “digital natives” [23] or “leading
technology enthusiasts” who “embrace all things digital”
[22]. Generally, millennials use technology more frequently
than their elders (94% own a mobile phone, compared to a
national average of 86%). They also use technology
differently: while no more likely than older peers to use
email, this group is twice as likely to play video games
[22]. Finally, millennials have more positive attitudes
towards technology: 74% believe it makes life easier,
compared to a national average of 64%. Because of these
differences—higher mobile phone use, greater attraction to
video games, positive attitudes towards technology—we
believe that this group may be open to using a gamified
application for citizen science. This view is shared by other
citizen science researchers who argue that games and
technology can be used to appeal to “younger and more
ethnically diverse participants” [20].
The 71 participants who evaluated Biotracker are
Millennial college students at a large state university (all
were between 18 and 24 years of age). These included 55
men and 16 women who self-reported the following
racial/ethnicity categories: African American (non-
Hispanic): 10, Asian/Pacific Islander: 25, Caucasian (non-
Hispanic): 35, Latino: 5, and Other: 1. Most were self-
declared engineering or computer science majors.
The evaluation of the Biotracker app was the culminating
activity of a five-week unit on citizen science. Our research
team spent one class (1.5 hours) with the students each
week. At the beginning of the unit students were surveyed
about their experience with citizen science. Most were
unfamiliar with the topic and none had participated in
campaigns. The first four weeks of the unit introduced
students to citizen science and gave them practice as
participants. Therefore, by the time students evaluated the
Biotracker app they were more familiar with citizen science
than would otherwise be typical.
Evaluation
Prior to evaluating the Biotracker app, students were given
information about downloading and installing the app and
encouraged to bring their smartphones to class. Researchers
prepared by setting up a large number of Floracaches in the
vicinity of the classroom building. Once in class, students
participated in a brief discussion about plant phenology and
the various gamified features of the app before going
outside for 30 minutes of free play with the application.
Figure 1. User Profile Screen (left) and Badges (right)
Data collection and analysis
After using the Biotracker application, participants
completed a 15-question online survey as a homework
assignment graded as completed/ not completed. The
survey began with open-ended questions such as “What
makes [certain] activities appealing?” Participants also
answered the questions, “How likely are you to use the
Biotracker app in the future?” and “How likely are you to
participate in other kinds of citizen science activities?”
General motivations were assessed with the open-ended
question, “What would motivate you to use the Biotracker
application or participate in a similar activity?” To assess
specific motivations, participants were given 11 statements
and asked, “Please indicate how motivating you would find
each reason for using the Biotracker app.” Nine of these 11
statements correspond directly to the motivations presented
in Table 1; for example, “fun” was assessed with the survey
item “Using the Biotracker app is fun.” The remaining 2
statements, “Earning badges is motivating” and
“Completing activities is motivating” were designed to
assess perceptions of gamification. Participants also
answered demographic questions and questions about their
experience with citizen science and natural observations.
Qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis, a
method of searching across a dataset to find repeated
patterns of meaning [5]. While similar to inductive
techniques such as grounded theory, thematic analysis
differs by allowing for a researcher’s existing theoretical or
analytical interest in the data. Thematic analysis is a six-
step process where researchers familiarize themselves with
4. the data, generate initial codes, search for themes, review
themes, define themes, and report themes. This iterative
process allowed us to move from stage to state as needed.
Quantitative analysis focused on the question about the 11
motivators discussed earlier. Answers were given on a 5-
point Likert scale, with choices listed as “very motivating,”
“somewhat motivating,” “neutral,” “somewhat
demotivating,” and “very demotivating”. For many
questions, the most extreme choices—“very motivating”
and “very demotivating”—had a very small number of
responses. To facilitate analysis, these answers were
therefore collapsed into two categories: “very motivating”
and “somewhat motivating” were grouped together as
“motivating,” while “very demotivating” and “somewhat
demotivating” were grouped together as “demotivating.”
This process of collapsing or combining Likert scale
categories is a common data transformation [1]. This
transformation can be valuable when participants are
hesitant to select extreme options, as with our data set.
Table 2. Independent t-test results
Our primary interest was to understand which motivations
were salient for those who would potentially use the
Biotracker app, as compared to those who would not. To
assess this, we grouped participants into two categories:
those who reported being somewhat or very likely to use
the app in the future (n=10), and those who reported being
somewhat or very unlikely to use the app in the future
(n=37), removing data from those who were indifferent
(n=24). A similar approach was used to evaluate different
motivations for those willing to contribute to other citizen
science projects (n=36) versus those who were not (n=15),
ignoring neutral responses (n=20). Because responses to
questions created ordinal data, Mann-Whitney U tests were
used to identify significant differences [1].
FINDINGS
Only 10 participants (14%) were “likely” or “very likely”
to use the app in the future. 24 (34%) were undecided, and
37 (52%) were “very unlikely” or “somewhat unlikely”. In
contrast, 36 (51%) were “likely” or “very likely” to
participate in other kinds of citizen science activities (20, or
28%, were undecided; only 15, or 21%, were “very
unlikely” or “somewhat unlikely”). We believe that the
relatively small proportion of users who were “likely” or
“very likely” to use the app in the future is indicative of
problems with location-awareness on certain devices, and
the use of unfamiliar vocabulary such as Latin names for
plants. We explore this further in our discussion.
Our remaining findings are grouped by the motivations
presented in Table 1. The first seven motivations are
discussed individually; the following four closely relate to
one another and are discussed together. Table 2
summarizes the quantitative results.
Fun (intrinsically rewarding)
Participants who would use Biotracker (U= 146.5, p< .01)
and participants who would contribute to other citizen
science projects (U= 391.0, p< .01) both considered “fun”
a significant motivation. Data from open-ended questions
reveals three types of “fun”: creativity, exploration of a
local environment, and relaxation.
Noting creativity as a common thread across his favorite
activities, one participant wrote, “They all involve being
able to perform a concrete action or set of actions that
create a physical result. It allows for the ability to create
something as well as merely observing native flora.”
Similarly, a user said that the Paparazzi activity (which
asks a user to take the best photograph of a cherry tree) is
fun because “It allows for creativity in photography. I’m
not an expert photographer by any means, but I’d like to
achieve having the best picture of a tree.”
Participants also had fun exploring their local environment.
“Locovore will teach us about something unique to our
area”; “Why not appreciate native flora from your area?”
Seasonality, a function of location, also comes into play: “I
think Cherry Blossom Blitz is a great idea in April—it
ensures the opportunity to go out and view a good Cherry
tree blossoming during the appropriate season.” This was
especially important for participants who already had a
strong local identity—as one expressed, “I am native to
Maryland so touring native species is something I would
prefer because it is most relatable to myself.”
Motivation
Total
(n=71)
Would use
Biotracker
Would
contribute to
other projects
Is fun
36
(51%)
U= 146.5 U= 391.0
p< 0.01 p< 0.01
Supports my
interest in plants
26
(27%)
U= 287.5 U= 502.5
p= 0.76 p= 0.12
Helps me learn
about plants and
their environment
41
(58%)
U=134.0 U= 501.5
p< 0.01 p= 0.11
Contributes
valuable scientific
data
42
(59%)
U= 201.0 U= 460.0
p= 0.07 p< 0.04
Contributes to the
public good
45
(63%)
U= 234.0 U= 456.5
p= 0.21 p< 0.04
Can connect me to
a community of
similar people
31
(44%)
U= 152.5 U= 536.0
p< 0.01 p= 0.26
Could be a fun
social activity
31
(44%)
U= 144.5 U= 472.5
p< 0.01 p= 0.06
Doing my best is
motivating
34
(48%)
U= 230.0 U= 556.5
p= 0.19 p= 0.37
Competing with
my peers is
motivating
34
(48%)
U= 180.0 U= 462.5
p< 0.04 p= 0.07
Earning badges is
motivating
33
(36%)
U= 154.5 U= 542.0
P< 0.01 p= 0.28
Completing
activities is
motivating.
44
(62%)
U= 202.0 U= 507.0
p= 0.06 p= 0.12
5. Finally, participants would enjoy using the application “if it
provided an experience for me that was [de-stressing] /
refreshing, and I had something to gain. For myself, a gain
would entail an enjoyable/relaxing interaction with
nature.” Another participant would
“just want to get out
there and enjoy nature while I do things, not worry.”
In
some cases, engaging with a local environment can be
relaxing in itself. “To me appreciating nature is a way to
destress and taking the time to look and appreciate native
Maryland trees is appealing. This is especially due to the
fact that I’m a Marylander and lived in a rural area where
trees were abundant and gave a sense of peace and home.”
Personal interest
Participants who would use the Biotracker app were not
more motivated by an interest in plants (U= 287.5, p= 0.76)
than those who would not use it. Some simply considered
plants boring: “I would be pretty unmotivated to participate
because the subject matter does not interest me to any real
degree.” Others thought that the plants chosen as
floracaches (reflecting the plants in the Project Budburst
database) lacked novelty: “Maple trees are everywhere.
That’s like getting excited every time you see a
dandelion…you can’t hype up generic, boring trees.” Users
would be motivated to use the app “if it related to activities
that I find interesting.” For example, “if a similar activity
was created that matched my interests, I would be more
inclined to participate…instead of caching wildlife, an
activity can be created to cache Maryland landmarks.”
Learning or education
Participants who reported that they were likely to use the
Biotracker app (U= 134.0, p< .01) were motivated to learn
about plants and their environments. Some were motivated
by the general “educational potential of the application”;
others expressed interest in certain plants (“I don’t know
very much about Magnolias, so I’m curious about how
different Magnolias vary.”). However, educational benefits
were rarely the first thing a user mentioned and are likely to
be a secondary motivation. One user, who noted that their
primary motivation would be competition, later added, “it’s
also nice to learn about the plants.” Similarly, after writing
“I enjoy looking and enjoying nature especially the cherry
blossoms,” a student added “I can also learn more about
them by identifying them so I know what I’m appreciating.”
The secondary role of education as a motivator may be due
to the fact that most participants are not interested in plants
enough to want to learn about them in the absence of other
benefits: “I have some interest, but not enough motivation
to go out with a field guide and start teaching myself.”
Contributing to science
As one participant writes, “I would be motivated if I was
helping someone use these statistics for a project because it
is going to a good cause. I would also be motivated to
participate in a similar activity because it can help
scientists very much.” Contributing to science was not a
significant motivator for those who are likely to use the
Biotracker app (U= 201.0, p= 0.07) compared to those who
would not, though it may have been with a larger sample
size. Some users recognized the value of the app to
scientists, though that was not enough in itself to warrant
their participation: “The only time I would use this
particular app is if it were part of a competition. I am not
particularly interested in plants, so while I understand that
the app is very useful, and will certainly be helpful to
scientists in the field, I would probably not use it.” Others
may not have recognized the value of the app to scientists,
since the contribution to science was not made explicit
enough: “If there was an app that provided data to a
worthwhile cause I would probably participate.” Indeed,
this may explain why those who would contribute to other
citizen science projects were more likely to express this
motivation than those who would not (U= 460.0, p< 0.04).
Contributing to public good
Contributing to the public good was not a significant
motivator for those who are likely to use the Biotracker app
(U= 234.0, p= 0.24). Again, this may be because the app
does not provide a clear “explanation of benefits to
society;” as one participant wondered, “How much is the
potential impact for society?” Those who did express a
motivation to contribute to the public generally evoked a
localized public such as other users of the Biotracker app
(“Creating a new Floracache is appealing because then I
will have contributed something that everyone else can
use”) or other college campus residents. On the later point,
one participant wrote, “Maple Marker interests me because
it can help with the maintenance of the campus.” Another
would be motivated “If a project can have a big impact on
campus life.” Those who would contribute to other citizen
science projects were more likely to express this motivation
than those who would not (U=456.5, p<0.04).
Community involvement
Community involvement is a significant motivation for
likely users of the Biotracker app (U= 152.5, p< .01). For
some of these users, community involvement could spur
individual engagement: “Seeing others around me use it
would motivate me to join them and contribute;” “The app
would probably have to be popular with my friends so we
would all use it.” Other users would be motivated to use
the app if could support existing community membership:
“If the app became popular among my peers, I’d definitely
use it to fit in with the crowed.” While the majority of our
participants seem to consider their group of a friends a
community, a few express the desire to interact with people
of similar mindsets: “I’d love to spend time in the company
of someone who I can relate to by appreciating nature. I
think it’s rare to find friends nowadays who are a bit
adventurous and are willing to get out there and appreciate
nature, but I feel like I could establish a deeper connection
with someone who shares that interest with me.”
General Socialization
Socialization – which designates social activity on a
smaller scale than community involvement, or “interacting
with other people”—is a powerful motivation for people
6. more likely to use the Biotracker app (U= 144.5; p< .01).
Specifically, users would be motivated to use the
application “if I could make it a peer activity- use it to
spend time with friends, or spend time with a romantic
partner.” Socialization can also enhance other motivations,
such as the fun of exploring nature: “I would like to be able
to use this app socially, so on certain occasion, I could not
only engage with nature for a benefit, but I could also
interact with others for social interaction, which would be
another benefit.” A similar user was motivated by “The
opportunity to be with friends. The chance to get to explore
nature and share the beauty with other people.”
Gamification
Four motivations related to gamification. “Doing my best is
motivating” (U=230.0, p= 0.19) and “completing activities
is motivating” (U= 202.0, p= 0.06) are not significant for
participants who would use Biotracker app; “competing
with my peers is motivating” (U= 180.0, p< .04) and
“earning badges is motivating” (U= 154.5, p< .01) are.
None of the four motives related to gamification were
significant for users who would participate in other citizen
science projects. These motivations are explored further in
the qualitative analysis presented below.
Responses to survey questions such as “What would
motivate you to use the Biotracker app or participate in a
similar activity?” confirm that gamification is a primary
motivation for this user group. One explains: “I guess if
this app was made into a game more than anything I would
use it more.” Another echoes, “Something that would
motivate me to use a similar app in the future would be the
gamification characteristic that this one employed. It makes
it much more fun and less tedious to participate in…citizen
science.” In fact, many users advocated for more
gamification: “If it was even more game-like that would be
great, because I got bored with the app.”
Regarding specific motivations, some participants found
motivation in competition “between friends, competition
amongst strangers.” As one wrote, “Introducing
competition to citizen science applications can have a
lasting impact on the overall effectiveness of the
application. These are the types of things that pique the
interest of the user.” An almost universal belief prevails
among these users that “Everyone wants to be leader of the
pack,” i.e., occupy the number one spot on the leaderboard:
“Being the person with the most Floracaches is a goal to
reach so it’s appealing because like any mobile game like
system, there’s always a task to reach even if it takes a few
times to get that tile/ award.”
Others were motivated by the “Personal satisfaction of
getting badges” and noted, “the badges are a nice touch,
and I think they should be expanded for future users.”
Users also wrote about the “satisfaction of completing
activities,” although such comments were less frequent
than assessments of badges or competition.
The motivations related to gamification that were not
significant included “doing my best” and “completing
activities” (though the latter may be significant with a
larger sample). In retrospect, we believe that this is due to
our failure to include game elements such as quests that
really challenge users to perform outside of peer
competition. It may also be true that, due to the social way
the app is used, peer competition is just more compelling.
DISCUSSION
Our findings suggest that the answer to our first research
question, whether gamifying a mobile application for
citizen science could engage an additional user group of
Millennials, is a qualified affirmative. Survey results
indicate that people who are likely to use the Biotracker
application in the future are significantly more motivated
by gamification in the form of “earning badges” and
“competing with my peers” then those who are not likely to
use the app. We also found support in our qualitative data
from users who would “use the app if it were in a game
format because that would interest me” and believe
gamification “makes it much more fun and less tedious to
participate in…citizen science”
On the other hand, half of our participants reported that
they were “somewhat unlikely” or “very unlikely” to use
the Biotracker app in the future. There were two main
reasons why some students would not use the app. First,
our prototype had some problems recognizing location on
select mobile devices. As one frustrated user writes, “The
application would be much better if location was
accurate.” Users also disliked the use of scientific names
for genus and species, and asked developers to “make it
more friendly to people who have little knowledge of
flora…I didn’t understand much of the Latin names.”
These usability issues are relatively easy to resolve. It is
also clear that participants will only use a gamified citizen
science app if doing so is convenient: “If I could use an app
in a way that did not interfere with my daily activities I
would absolutely participate in citizen science projects. I
don’t want to have to go out of my way to use the app.” A
second participant similarly noted, “When choosing a
citizen science activity to complete, I would most likely
choose one that is interesting, but that is not too time
consuming.” This issue is much harder to resolve.
We draw two general conclusions from these combined
results. First, while most Millennials may not embrace a
gamified citizen science app, a significant portion may—
and they will likely engage with the application precisely
because it is gamified. This claim is supported by
quantitative data that shows our Millennials find earning
badges and peer competition motivating, and by
elaborations offered in response to open-ended survey
questions. In contrast, users who were likely to participate
in other citizen science projects expressed established
motivations such as “contribute valuable scientific data”
and “contribute to the public good.” Therefore, a new user
group of Millennials who might not find the traditional
motivations of citizen scientists inspiring may be willing to
engage with a citizen science application if it is gamified.
7. Second, because of their expectation that technology can
and should make life easier [22], this user group may not be
as patient with a gamified citizen science app as the citizen
scientists who are already motivated to volunteer their data.
Therefore, it is especially important that gamification is
pervasive and well designed, usability issues are resolved,
and tasks are clearly structured and at easy to understand.
Research question two asks, “Which aspects of the
gamified app would be most motivating to those who are
likely to use it?” As discussed above, gamification can be a
strong motivator, particularly in the form of badges or
competition with peers. Millennials who are likely to use
the Biotracker app are also influenced by motivations
related to enjoyment or other personal benefits, namely
“fun” and “learn about plants and their environment.”
Finally, for this user group the desire to be social is acute,
and should be supported by an application’s design.
As one user suggested, the app did not provide a clear
“explanation of benefits to society.” One way to resolve
this issue could be to design badges that reward users who
contribute to a dataset used in scientific research. A list of
publications using Budburst data could also be included in
the application. These and similar changes could help
attract some of the people who were willing to participate
in other citizen science projects, but not the Biotracker app.
Regarding our final research question, “What potential
benefits could this group receive from use of the gamified
app,” we identify two main types of benefits. The first is
Friedman’s “engagement or interest in a community,” a
clear motive of our survey respondents [12]. This is
exemplified by the participant who writes, “[knowing]
what has been going on over the local area may encourage
people to go see a nice looking patch of flowers or an
interesting tree that others may have cached.” The existing
literature on citizen science also supports the importance of
place as a motivation; one survey of Neighborhood
Nestwatch participants found that 83% reported an
increased awareness and sense of place [11]. In this way, a
sense of place or community is both a motivation for
engaging with Biotracker or similar applications and a
benefit to participation that grows over time. A closely
related benefit listed by Friedman [12] is “time outdoors.”
Again, this is both a motivation and a benefit for Biotracker
users who “enjoy looking at nature and being outside.”
Second, participants benefited from “knowledge of
content” [12]. This is illustrated by comments like “It’s
also nice to learn about the plants” and “could be
interesting to learn about the species in your state, could
learn the most from these activities,” although the
application could admittedly do a better job providing
educational material (“Fun facts” about each plant are
being developed for the final release). The support for
“knowledge of content” is consistent with the findings of
other citizen science researchers, which suggests that in
some cases as many as 90% of citizen science volunteers
report increased knowledge about the species they observe
[11]. However, it was somewhat unexpected among the
given population who did not self-identify as being
intrinsically interested in plants. Perhaps it was the “no
pressure environment in which you can learn something
new,” which helped instill this interest in plants.
It may be possible to help transition Millennials into more
active citizen scientists. The interest that some showed in
learning (even as a secondary motivation) may, with
guidance, transform into genuine interest in scientific
content and contributions. Researchers suggest encouraging
learning with “measurable, attainable, relevant” goals [17].
These learning goals could be supported with sequential
“plant education” activities and badges.
Limitations
This exploratory research is aimed at establishing which
gamification techniques are likely to engage Millennials.
This research cannot claim, conclusively, that a gamified
mobile app can engage these users, or can engage them
over extended periods of time (a major concern in both
gamification and citizen science [2,26]). An experimental
manipulation comparing engagement between a gamified
and a natural application would be a logical next step in
confirming that gamification can, in fact, make a citizen
science application appealing to this user group.
Participants were first year college students in the
culminating phase of a 5-week unit on citizen science. It is
unlikely that most Millennials will have the same
familiarity with citizen science as our sample, who attended
four prior lectures on the topic. Therefore, responses to
motivational prompts such as The Biotracker app
“contributes valuable scientific data” and “contributes to
the public good” may be overly positive. Without further
evidence we cannot generalize data on these motivations to
other groups. Similarly, we cannot generalize our findings
to technology enthusiasts from other age groups.
Conclusions
We evaluated Biotracker, a gamified mobile application for
citizen science, with 71 undergraduate students from the
millennial generation. Our evaluation assessed whether
Millennials would use a gamified citizen science app, what
might motivate them to do so, and what benefits they might
derive from participation. We found that while not all of
our participants were likely to use our application in the
future, those who would were attracted to elements of
gamification (competition with peers, earning badges),
social motivations (community membership, socialization),
and personal benefits such as fun and education.
Participants who would use our gamified application did
not express motivations such as the desire to contribute to
science and the desire to contribute to a public good that
are held by traditional citizen science volunteers [21, 25,
26]. This suggests that gamification may reach new
audiences for citizen science campaigns. We also found
that Millennials can benefit from using a gamified citizen
science app through informal science education and
increased community engagement.
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank our participants, their instructor,
our colleagues at Project Budburst including Sandra
Henderson and Dennis Ward, and the Biotracker team. This
work was supported by NSF grant #SES 0968546
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