Mapping urban accessibility: gamifying the citizens’ experience

Abstract

In this paper we present the design process and some interesting field t r ial r e sults o f t w o d i fferent game applications, designed and developed in order to extend and motivate the community of mPASS. mPASS is an urban accessibility mapping system that allows citizens to collect reliable data about barriers and facilities via crowdsourcing and crowdsensing and it uses these data to calculate accessible paths. On the one hand mPASS needs to collect a sufficiently dense, detailed and trustworthy amount of data. On the other hand, the community interested in obtaining accessible paths is not big enough to reach the critical mass of information needed by the system in order to provide effective services. To overcome this problem, we investigated gamification strategies in designing two mobile applications targeting young adults walkers, aimed to enlarge the data contributors community. The design process and field trial results of both games are presented, highlighting the design decisions resulted from feedback sessions, focus groups and experience prototyping.