Crowdsourcing biodiversity data gathering has been seen by many as the silver bullet. The lack of professional naturalist, and funding resources to hire more, have pushed regional and national institution around the world in ambitious citizen science programs. However in todays over saturated attention economy [1] it seems more and more difficult to motivate new or existing users into contributing. Attention scarcity is fundamentally reshaping the economics of the industries it touches; there is no reason why we should be left over. In this paper, we analyses new mechanisms that can be activated as a work around the current situation. We focus on the concept of ROI (Return on Investment), Gamification [2] and Emotional Design [3] as mean to re-invent Citizen Science program and maybe make them work for us. Thought our recent experience on a number of citizen science projects in we have been able to test and implement some of these concepts.

1. Crowd sourcing in an attention economy
No such thing as a free lunch
Olivier Rovellotti, Julie Chabalier, Amandine Sahl
Natural Solutions, Marseille France

2. SME
Clients
We advise and write code

3. We need more data , why not “crowd source” it.
Hold on it’s not working for me.
Let’s think about it?

4. It’s free
Not enough data
Users are everywhere
Not enough ressources

5. • Quality is actually not that bad
• Users can improve
Its good for outreach and education

6. ok, let’s crowd source

7. Different Phases
Promotion
1
Design
2
Maturity
3
Loss of interest
4

8. Different Phases

9. Design:
Hundreds
Science
Millions
Citizen Science

10. Complexity:
8 000
Species
Just about
10 ?

11. Protocol:
good
Complexity
Numbers

12. Bad:
Complexity
Numbers

13. Ungly:
Complexity
Numbers

14. Protocol Complexity
Taxonomic Complexity

15. Keep it simple (You are not dealing
with professional)
Provide training, tutorials or interactive demo
Use expert on training events

16. Launch
Peak of inflated
expectation
Promotion
Design
Maturity
Loss of interest

17. Emotional design
Starck
Juicer
Norman
Not 4 juice, 4 conversation
Clever
Emotions

18. Reflective
Viceral
Control
Behavioral
Self image, satisfaction
Effectiveness of use
Appearence

19. Viceral
Nature

20. Reflective
Ecologie
Science

21. Loss of interest
Promotion
Design
Maturity
Loss of interest

22. Attention economy
ZACK DENFELD

23. Paris –Marseille (3H00)
2h00
1H00
Some are really good at keeping your attention

24. Move from Denial to Acceptance
Go global from the start
Give ROI for attention
Cherish the average contributor
Concentrate on your segments
Cultivate relationships

25. Long term
Involvement
Promotion
Maturity
Plateau of
productivity
Design
Loss of interest

26. Involvement
Gamify
Quest
Leaderboard
Scores/badges

27. Involvement : Give back /ROI
Science
Data
Public

28. Take home message
• This can probably be applied to your project
• You are probably already applying it
• This is a work in progress
• It needs to be improved and tested

29. www.natural-solutions.eu
Thanks
@orovellotti