INSEMTIVES - Incentives
for Semantics
It seems that, although there are many opponents to the badge-oriented mechanism to involve users, considering it non-sense (see the comments on the TechCrunch’s blog entry), badges are an effective mechanism to get users participating. The point seems to be adding value to the “simple” fact of badge gathering.
You can read the whole article at http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/20/brightkite-badges/
Applications are invited for the position of “Post-doctoral Research Fellow” as part of a joint research project between the Masdar Institute of Science& Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project’s Principal Investigators are:
The successful candidate will work on a collaborative interdisciplinary research project. The project , titled “Influencing Collective Human Behavior Using Distributed Intelligent Systems,” aims to help people use resources more efficiently. The project will have (1) a theoretical component focusing on game-theoretic and incentive mechanism design issues, and (2) an empirical component to test these techniques in behavioral experiments using lab experiments and real deployment through mobile computing and sensor technologies.
For further details, please see: http://www.mit.edu/~irahwan/docs/20100529_postdoc_advert.pdf
I found this very interesting video by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA, http://thersa.org) adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at this organization which illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.
Enjoy!
Dunnit! is a To Do list application, which lets people create lists of tasks and then tick them off as the tasks are completed.
The application looks like a game: It lets users win achievements the more they use this app and it lets them compete against their friends and colleagues to see who’s more productive. Twitter integration lets them boast to the wider world too.
Read more about it at http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/36229/Dunnit-an-iPhone-To-Do-list-app-with-game-like-achievements
In this article recently appeared on FirstMonday, Viola Krebs illustrates the motives behind the willingness of a large community of individuals to volunteer computing power to help solve a medical research problem. What I find mighty interesting for our endeavors is:
a) the literature review section of the paper (it looks like we are doing a good job in tracking the relevant literature even though we apply it to a different domain!)
b) the methodological section in which they present a fine method for discriminating Implicit and Explicit motivation mechanisms.
You can read the whole paper here:
firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2783/2452
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