Let Participants in Your Citizen Science Project Know That You Care - Reward them with a Badge!

Communication in Citizen Science projects is a significant factor in your project's success. There are many ways to connect with the participants in a project, one of them is rewarding users when they contribute.

Rewarding Citizen Scientists for their Contributions

As part of the SPOTTERON user motivation package, Citizen Science Apps on the platform offer various ways to keep participants sharing their observations and contribute to your project.

One such tool in community-based apps are Badges

A badge is a device or accessory, often containing an organisation's symbol, which is presented or displayed to indicate some feat of service, a special accomplishment, or a symbol of authority granted by taking an oath. Badges were popular as jewellery in the Middle Ages and varied from costly works of jewellery to simple mould-made badges in lead or other base metals.
We also fondly remember them from our Girl/Boy Scout days when getting a new badge was something to strive for, and receiving one was accompanied with great satisfaction!

Classic Badges on a Boy Scout's Uniform (CC:BY SA 2.0 Douglas Muth, Wikipedia)

In the 21st century, we're taking Badges online to reward Citizen Scientists for their contributions to your project!

Funded by CrowdWater, the Badges are an element to support long-term motivation and give back rewards to users based on their activity. Badges are currently based on the number of spots/updates a user contributes. To see their current badges, a user has to make one spot or update submission. Every time a user earns a new badge, a friendly dialogue opens up with the icon, title and description, and the options to close or go to your own badges.

Example of Badges in the CrowdWater Citizen Science App on the SPOTTERON platform.

While the standard set of badges is already included as a feature in every new App, we're happy to create custom badge designs & texts for a project and replace current ones to have more customisation or a more stringent presentation of the project's topic or identity.