Fighting exclusion: a multimedia mobile app with zombies and maps as a medium for civic engagement and design

Abstract

This paper presents a study on urban data crowdsourcing driven by Geo-Zombie, a multimedia mobile application we designed and developed to engage pedestrians in taking note of urban architectural impediments and facilities by documenting them through pictures and multimedia data. Geo-Zombie aims at transforming the civic activity of contributing into a virtual gamified experience where players attempt to escape from horrific situations in which zombies are ready to cannibalize unsuspecting walkers. In some sense, walkers that kill zombies deeply reconnect with the concept of imminent danger which can be fought resorting to appropriate civic actions. To challenge our initial hypotheses we conducted a design process, starting with a concept generation where three different concepts were discussed which gave rise to five different multimedia mobile apps including the one with zombies. Then, focus group, experience prototyping, application design and implementation, and finally field trials were exploited to refine the design and to select the best apps out of the five that better responded to the need of involving common people in collecting urban accessibility data. It is worth noting that the experiences of use with 50 avid walkers have demonstrated that a multimedia mobile app with maps and zombies can be a concrete step towards a social inclusion strategy while inviting new reflections and discussions on the issue of urban data crowdsourcing.

Tailoring a Points Scoring Mechanism for Crowd-Based Knowledge Pooling

“…Most of the studies in gamification embedded a combination of motivational factors: points, leaderboards, and levels [41], dual point systems and rating [6,37,38], leaderboards, ranking, unlocking information [47], progress, points, ranking, network [48], leaderboard, badges [49], challenge, progress bar, theme, rewards [44], badges, levels [50], points, levels, avatar [44]. The distinct effect of point scores on users' behavior and motivation is still vague, a gap we wish to narrow.…”

“…Further analyzing the scoring mechanism in regard to the four types of crowdsourcing systems based on [16] reveals that in most crowd-processing, crowd rating and crowd solving settings, the scoring mechanism design measures task fulfillment. Only few studies to date have provided an explanation or describe how the scoring mechanism is actually designed in crowdcreated settings [11,38,40,44]. Consequently it remains a question to explore.…”

Citizen science for pedestrian cartography: collection and moderation of walkable routes in cities through mobile gamification

“…In order to motivate them, they used a system of repayment, from points and ranking. Prandi et al [21] explored ways to encourage users to upload geo-tagged photos of obstacles on their system, which identifies viable paths for people with movement difficulties. They found that gamification features increased the involvement of contributors.…”

“…In contrast to Roccetti et al [20], we gave the users the ability to upload whatever route they want, even if they don't usually follow it, because in our research we aim to record all possible pedestrian routes. Although the gamification of the mobile application could be considered as lightweight in comparison to related work (e.g., [21]), it has been sufficient to collect enough data for preparing a pedestrian map of a small city with forty thousand inhabitants. Moreover, similar lightweight gamification methods have proven very successful in commercial services, such Foursquare, which motivates user to check-in just by offering (mayor) badges.…”

All Work and No Play? Facilitating Serious Games and Gamified Applications in Participatory Urban Planning and Governance

“…Other authors emphasise that citizens still engage but the ways of communication have changed drastically, complementing and partly even replacing community meetings and co-located participatory action with digital tools and social media (Ekman & Amnå, 2012;Gordon & Mihailidis, 2016;Hay, 2007;Kleinhans, van Ham, & Evans-Cowley, 2015;Macafee & De Simone, 2012;Marichal, 2013;Skocpol, 1997;Tufekci & Wilson, 2012). In different planning and design-related disciplines, digital tools for online participation, such as e-democracy portals, online consultations, e-voting, crowdsourcing, blogging, social network platforms, mobile apps, community GIS, and online deliberation, have gained increased attention as instruments to involve citizens and actor groups who either are too busy or not interested to participate in co-located meetings (e.g., Ahmed, Mehdi, Moreton, & Elmaghraby, 2015;Belluci et al, 2015;Kelley & Johnston, 2011;Prandi, Roccetti, Salomoni, Nisi, & Jardim Nunes, 2017).…”