Understanding Citizen Science + Best Practices Research
Citizen Science
Citizen science projects are websites such as Zooniverse and Tomnod which feature large clusters of data that can be analyzed by large groups of volunteers on an openly accessible website. The point of these sites are to help researchers, archeologists, and other scientific and preservation workers.
Examples of Citizen Science Projects
Tomnod
What is Included: An Introduction page which explains the basic purpose of the Citizen science project. If the user continues, a more in-depth summary appears. A step three “How-to” guide pops up at the third phase before beginning the search. No Registration is required. Hotkey buttons are enabled for a quick Yes or No. The Ability to share the current plot of land is available. Data with a time stamp for when the satellite image was taken appears at the bottom right side of the screen. Very Importantly, they have included a zoom button.
How do they start?: Tombot begins with a three step introduction which includes a basic summary of the projects goal, a more in-depth look at what their users are meant to be looking for and then a tutorial on how to spot these seals and proper etiquette on finding them.
How do they use gamification?: Types of gamification involve a system which details how many images you have completed whether you’re registered or unregistered. They display a count of votes next to the Seals and No Seals option, similarly to a scoring system or a bets system.
What makes them fun and engaging?: What is fun is seeing new areas and seeing how they differentiate as well as looking for seals in that area. The satisfaction of finding what the goal is makes the use of this site much more satisfying.
What makes them frustrating or boring?: Finding that a user has chosen the term Seals, stating that there are seals in the area when there are none is discouraging and frustrating especially when every image in a sample set has that 1 vote for seals.
How do they use visuals?: Tomnod uses a slightly rounded blue-gray theme which is easy on the eyes. For the yes and no or seals and no seals options they use a pale red and cyan that are non-distracting. Interact-able buttons in the navigation such as the sign in button are a lighter gray than the background to give it a small pop on the screen.
Zooniverse
What is Included: This website is a collection of links to Citizen Science websites that are run by the Zooniverse webpage. It contains the options to register, sign-in, create a project, categories for its various projects, and many tools to become involved.
How do they start?: Upon visiting the website you land on a landing page that shows all of the categories in a row at the top of the page as well as 20 projects below them. Clicking on a project brings you to the projects own homepage within Zooniverse.
How do they use gamification?: Since this site serves as a collection of Citizen Science projects as opposed to being one It does not make use of the gamification technique.
What makes them fun and engaging?: The design of the site is easy on the eyes and fun to scroll through with the various types of projects that make up the list.
What makes them frustrating or boring?: With the small size of the thumbnails and rudimentary amount of information it is difficult to tell from a glance what a project actually is which can make it easy to miss some important projects.
How do they use visuals?: They use a light blue and white monochromatic theme that is complemented by light icons in the categories and good typography. Everything is consistent except for the icons of each individual project which is chosen by the project maker and differentiates the projects from the rest of the website.
Anti-Slavery-Manuscripts
Run by Zooniverse
What is Included: Run by Zooniverse, Anti-Slavery Manuscripts links its sign-in and register features back to Zooniverse so that if you are signed in there, you do not need to sign-in separately. Included in the front page of the Anti-Slavery Manuscripts homepage is a description of the project which scrolls down to a section of example images and a community option. Once you enter or click the “Start Transcripting button it takes you to a long tutorial which details out the ettiquite of transcribing, how to transcribe correctly and gives examples of tools that are available to use. When out of the tutorial you are given a paper that you can interact with and when you click on a red line a text box opens up for you transcribe that particular sentence with options in the textbook of [unclear], [deletion], etc.
How do they start?: The landing page of the website has a summary of the page, examples of letters that are to be transcribed and a community tab.
How do they use gamification?: Being the most interesting project I’ve personally reviewed, this site, rather than using scoring system, simply lets you type out information from the document and then you can finish but there are no systems that track your progress through the website itself.
What makes them fun and engaging?: Typing out information is a much more fun process than searching and hunting for details in an image. This could be partially because the challenge is greater and it isn’t just a yes, or no option.
What makes them frustrating or boring?: With the small amount of cursive I learned in elementary school, my ability to read cursive is limited. Therefore, this project is harder for me because I cannot correctly read all the words and have to use [unclear] for these words.
How do they use visuals?: The site adheres to the documents of the time period they are pulling from. The theme is sepia, using serif types to stay with the theme. The input fields are white and the site is mainly made for more functionality over the form of the site itself.
