This morning my sister texted me to be on guard in my neighborhood because of recent crime reports. Coincidentally, I had been reading this research article about a possible solution to local crime incidences. Purnomo, Indriasari, Anindito, Andrean, Prasetyo (2019) discuss their research on CrimeID, a crowdsharing platform, tested in Indonesia, in which community members could report crimes in real time, and also annotate news articles that align with the incidences. The idea of the platform was that individuals would have immediate information about neighborhoods to avoid (using location services). Although Purnomo et al.(2019) attempted to use gamification, or a leaderboard, to motivate individuals to share on the platform, ultimately, it was community members lack of motivation which made the technology questionable as a useful tool for safety.
I found this article interesting because it served as a mobile technology that includes crowdsourcing and smart communities. After reading it, I questioned what would motivate people to contribute to this database. Was gamification used in the proper context here?
https://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jim/article/view/10172/5891
Purnomo W.P, Y. S., Indriasari, T. D., Anindito, K., Andrean, Y., & Prasetyo, J. G. (2019). CrimeID: Towards crime prevention and community safety in indonesia using mobile and web technology. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 13(9), 52-65.
After reading the article, I feel that assumptions may have led to the low success of this app. As you mentioned, the context of gamification may be misplaced if the goal is to create a safer community. It appears the assumption of gamification leading to increased participation may not have been the most viable mode of motivation.The assumptions I would query would include the accuracy of the crime news site, including the number of news sites that were used as the sources; the digital literacy of the population; and the connection to services such as data and GPS on the population’s devices. As for annotating crimes in real-time, I would query whether the assumption that all crimes would be witnessed, or whether the victim would refer to an app to report a crime. I would also query the means by which this app was marketed – was it marketed as a game or as a helpful community tool?
This article presents an interesting segue to discuss the use of technology, and the need for due diligence of a population before the creation of an app. In the context of this article, I would have suggested that the computer science students spend part of the semester populating the app, and then spend another part of the semester designing modifications to improve its uptake by the community. As mentioned by Ying, making this a crowd-sourced, short-term project may have improved its development, which in turn could help its long-term success.
Hi Ying!
I totally agree that an app like this is at danger for trolling. Perhaps there would have to be some moderators like on reddit? I think that having the police involved definitely makes the app seem more credible, but recently I learned that police forces sometimes use algorithms to rank crimes on severity. This can lead to over or under-policing certain areas, and sometimes discrimination (O’ Neil, 2017).
Here is the article I read:
https://ideas.ted.com/justice-in-the-age-of-big-data/
Hi Jennifer,
How fascinating! It is unfortunate that such an app was not more successful due to a lack of participation. However, perhaps the lack of participation is a good sign, that the neighborhood wasn’t so bad that people were constantly checking their app for neighborhoods to avoid? I think such an app could be more successful if police were involved. People follow police on Instagram for announcements so it shouldn’t be a problem to follow a safety app, especially if the information was coming from a credible source. Would online trolls be a setback for such technology? Would some people just post fake updates for fun? This app reminds me of Glympse, a traffic app that is informed by users. It has seen some success, probably because so many people drive and traffic is terrible so everyone is on it. It seems to me that crowdsourcing projects are most successful when it is short-term. There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of volunteers when it comes to a project, but if it is something long-term that has no finish line, people lose motivation quickly.