Design Recommendations for a Collaborative Game of Bird Call Recognition Based on Internet of Sound Practices

Citizen Science aims to engage people in research activities on important issues related to their well-being. Smart Cities aim to provide them with services that improve the quality of their life. Both concepts have seen significant growth in the last years and can be further enhanced by combining their purposes with Internet of Things technologies that allow for dynamic and large-scale communication and interaction. However, exciting and retaining the interest of participants is a key factor for such initiatives. In this paper we suggest that engagement in Citizen Science projects applied on Smart Cities infrastructure can be enhanced through contextual and structural game elements realized through augmented audio interactive mechanisms. Our inter-disciplinary framework is described through the paradigm of a collaborative bird call recognition game, in which users collect and submit audio data that are then classified and used for augmenting physical space. We discuss the Playful Learning, Internet of Audio Things, and Bird Monitoring principles that shaped the design of our paradigm and analyze the design issues of its potential technical implementation.