The Inclusion of Gamification Solutions to Enhance User Enjoyment on Crowdsourcing Platforms

Games with a purpose offer the opportunity to motivate volunteers to participate in citizen science projects in a fun and engaging manner. In this regard, this paper introduces the gamification concepts present in our browser-based crowd-sourcing platform. The aim of these elements is to encourage users to voluntarily use their leisure time on regular basis to record and annotate data in a fun and playful environment. To ensure our platform appeals to a wide range of players, a variety of gamification elements aimed at different player groups are integrated including gamerscore, leaderboards, badges and bonus items to name but a few examples. To evaluate the effectiveness of these inclusions we conducted user surveys of 33 new players. This analysis indicates that the gamification additions increase user engagement and gratification when performing elementary crowdsourcing tasks.