Collecting data for indoor mapping of the University of Münster via a location based game

Abstract

Nowadays the collection of spatial indoor mapping data presents a big challenge for both science and industry because there is not a cost-effective method yet for it as it is for outdoor mapping. Research is pointing out to crowdsourcing as means of address the challenge of massive indoor mapping based on the principle that people should be the main source of information. Therefore the crowd needs a tool that lets them do indoor mapping tasks as well as means of motivation. This project has as its main goal to study the impact of gamification as a motivation factor by implementing and evaluating it in a mobile application aimed for acquisition of indoor spatial data of the buildings of the University of Münster. For this purpose an already existing mobile application was modified to incorporate game elements, thus creating a new version of the app. Three game mechanics were added for the new version of the app: score, leaderboard and conquest map. Once both apps were ready (gamified and original non-gamified) an evaluation was carried out with 28 participants (14 male and 14 female) to assess the impact of game mechanics when users are performing indoor mapping tasks. As a result we may say that the most of participants preferred the gamified application over the non-gamified one, the study also shows that actually men favored the gamified app more than women.