Citizen Science Game Development Symposium

Citizen science — a growing phenomenon in which the public participates in scientific research — is increasingly taking the form of citizen science games (CSGs) in order to improve crowd engagement and tackle difficult tasks. CSGs also play an important role in online education by providing educational resources for their respective scientific topics alongside their science-based games. Some CSGs even have their own educational game mode for students or explicit instructions for educational or classroom use. Yet, there are few resources on how to design and develop CSGs well, especially with respect to an enjoyable player experience. Moreover, the current spaces and communities for citizen science are (inadvertently) exclusionary to CSGs, and most CSG development teams are isolated from each other. This isolation prevents CSG developers from learning from each other, and potentially leads to many repeated mistakes in development or other inefficiencies. To alleviate these issues, we propose a symposium for CSG developers to have a round-table discussion of shared design/development problems and potential solutions. By providing an initial space for CSG developers to meet and connect as a community, we hope to enable future growth of CSG development and the improvement of CSG design. Although this is only one step in creating such a community, the first step is always the most important one.