Sending messages to all participants, enabling pop-ups: how the extended "Project Messages" feature supports participation, communication, and dissemination in Citizen Science Apps
On the SPOTTERON Platform, project teams and researchers can reach out to all participants via an integrated communication tool, called "Project Messages". The tool enables projects to disseminate news and updates, inform all participants, send links to everyone to new blog posts or pages, and tell stories. Communication is an important part of every Citizen Science and Public Engagement project. With the Project Messages tool, scientists and communicators can bring inclusivity and activity for citizens in a project to the next level, and keep the user community informed.
Key features of Project Messages on SPOTTERON:
Sending custom messages to all participants
Every project running Citizen Science Apps on SPOTTERON has automatically access to the Project Messages interface for composing a new message or popup, adding display elements like the cover image or links. After creating a new Project Message, sending it out to the whole user community or particular target groups in the project is available with just a click. Furthermore, for international projects, it is possible to even send messages to users or user groups from one or more target countries, making the tool also work well with the Project Internationalization Toolkit. A message also supports multilingual texts for all languages present in the project. Sending of a message can also be done with timers, e.g. to prepare a Project Message and send it on a particular day and time, and to set up repeating messages or pop-ups on a monthly, yearly, or even daily basis.
Various Project Messages (Push Messages and Pop-Ups) in different Citizen Science and Public Engagement Apps
Push notifications - Keeping the participants directly in the loop
When sending a Project Message to participants, each users' device will also notify the owner with a push notification. When such a push notification is received, the phone or device of a participant is capable of playing an alert sound or indicating a new push notification via a light signal. Both Android and Apple's IOS support push notifications, and also display a preview of the message received from the Citizen Science App in the phone's status bar.
This makes the Project Message feature especially powerful and practical. Each project on the SPOTTERON platform has this option to reach out instantly to every participant in the user community, who then will receive the notification directly on their own phone or device. When tapping the notification, the user is taken directly into the project's App and can read the full message and see the media images used as the cover, as well as the Read More link.
Pop-Ups - show a Project Message to each user opening the app
Besides the option to send a Project Message with push notifications to each participant's phone or device, it is also possible to configure to show it as an in-App Pop-Up. Pop-Ups are displayed one time for each user, when the App is opened and the Pop-Up has not been seen by the participant. Pop-Ups can be a valuable tool to inform about App updates, new survey options, highlighting of data collection goals, community news, and other related themes.
Push messages or Pop-Ups — or both
The Project Message feature is constantly extended and improved in collaboration with universities, NGOs, and other stakeholders across Europe and beyond. Over time, new features have been designed and integrated into the toolkit. One core functionality is the option to create Project Messages either for sending actively to everyone at a given point in time, including a push notification on the users' devices.Also, Project Messages can be set up to show as a pop-up, which every user will see the next time they open the app. It is moreover possible for e.g. important news to enable both options, so participants in the project app get a notification on their smartphone, and have a popup appear when opening up the App.
Current elements of a Project Message
The editor in the Data Administration Interface of each project on the platform allows setting up various elements for customizable project messages. In the interface, proejct teams can compose the Porject Message in an easy-to-use dashboard, that allows independent and ongoing publication of outreach messages. For Citizen Science proejct with multiple languages
- Media Cover
Each Project message can have an image uploaded, which is presented as the cover of the message inside the App - Title
The title is displayed in the Project Message prominently under the cover image in a larger font size - Text with formatting options and links
The text interface allows visual formatting like bold, italic, etc. and also supports using links to external websites, blogs, or videos directly in the text - Emojis
In the main text and the title, emojis can be used to give the Project Message a lighter feel or to include thematic emojis as separators - Read more link
The input field allows adding a read more link under the text of the Project Message, which is displayed in bigger font-size plus an icon
Additional features and options for Project Messages
Project admins can set timers to send Project Messages or publish Pop-ups in the interface. This allows the project team to prepare Project Messages ahead, and choose the right time and day to disseminate the news. Additionally, it is also possible to set repeating messages. In such a case, participants can e.g. weekly reminded of contributing a reoccurring observation.
And an outlook on upcoming features:
As mentioned above, we develop features further in close collaboration with project partners like universities or NGOs, and with project consortiums in Horizon Europe and other Citizen Science funding grants.For the Project Messages feature, extensions in the production plan are:
Permanent popups for new users
Currently, conceptualized more as a news dissemination tool, the Project Message Popups are designed to be active for a maximum of one week. With the extension, it will also be possible to configure unlimited pop-ups, which have no automatic end time. This extension will expand the use-cases for popups, e.g. to project welcome messages for new users or external newsletter subscription links.
Triggering popups by activity and successes per user
In the future, project teams can additionally create popups that are displayed after customizable trigger points. Such triggers can, for example, be:
- A number of observations, submitted by a user
- Repeating pop-up after a number of days since last seen by a user
As new options for the Project Message feature on the SPOTTERON App platform, these development tasks will notability extend the impact of the communication tool further.
With being able to independently compose, configure, and send messages to all participants, and to set up popups in the own Citizen Science App, scientists as well as project managers or dissemination work package leaders in Horizon Europe have advanced tools at their fingertips from the start of an App on SPOTTERON.
By supporting communication in a project and enabling each project to reach out to their whole user community, motivation, and knowledge generation is fostered, while being an active platform for interactive participation.
Are you interested in utilizing the Project Messages in your Citizen Science or Public Engagement app, too? Drop us a brief message and we can schedule a call:
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