River Rescue: Identifying iNaturalist Animals via Gamification

Abstract

There has been a recent trend in using gamification (that is using game design in non-game scenarios) to attract new citizen scientists and make citizen science tasks more enjoyable. Most of the current research in gamification makes use of points, badges, and leaderboards. However, not much research has been done on adding different forms of gameplay. Thus, this study investigates the possibility of using gameplay to encourage participation in citizen science. In this paper, I conducted an experiment to evaluate whether adding hyper casual gameplay to a citizen-science application can influence user engagement while classifying observations of animals from iNaturalist (an online, global biodiversity index). I developed 2 games under the name of River Rescue: one with a casual gameplay aspect and one without, with participants being randomly assigned to each group. Results indicate that, for this group of participants, adding a casual gameplay aspect did not significantly impact user engagement. However, based on participant suggestions and qualitative data collected, my findings suggest that future work might want to research fast-paced games with progression, making sure to avoid repetitive/tedious tasks and to minimize loading times.