The Virtual Green Map - Foursquare and Sustainability

For the past few weeks I've been working with our Sustainability in Action team, looking at developing a communications strategy that makes the most of social technologies without overwhelming them with too many channels to maintain - especially when the people in question are more at home working on the wormery than on the computer. It's been particularly interesting finding common ground in these conversations.

A lot of the work is still to be completed, but my favourite part of the project is working towards a green map using geo-tagging technologies, in particular Foursquare.


One of the aims of the communications strategy is to let the University community know about the various sustainability/green efforts already in place. Various signs are being put up around the campus, but this can only go so far, and doesn't (for example) make it easy to find out about the green roof above your head.


So, by creating a foursquare account and "checking in" at each of the University buildings the team can leave "Did you know..." tips, so anyone else checking in at that building gets a little nugget of information. A virtual green map layer, if you like. The pictures in this post show the first couple of entries we have left.

We can then hook up Foursquare with Twitter and with some Google Maps magic on their website start to present a live Green Map - this bit is theoretical, but I'm sure it can be done, right?

Gamification, Pointsification and Embarrassment

For those not up to date on lingo in the games developer world, 'gamification' is the new buzzword to describe the process of adding game-like elements to (especially) web activities to encourage engagement. See wikipedia definition.

Around this time last year I described a plan of mine to encourage uptake of staff completion of a compulsory fire safety eLearning package by publishing a leaderboard of the results. Well that project is now underway, so I wanted to reflect on how it was going, and in what ways this might be described as gamification.

Sandwiched somewhere in the middle of our staff intranet (staffcentral) homepage is the leaderboard.
This is updated (manually - by me) weekly. Staff can also click through to see the full leaderboard for all depts in the university (as well as the blurb explaining this is indeed a legal requirement).

So does it work?

Well yes. The package launched in April/May via email notifications, and around 50 people in targeted departments completed it, and then a few weeks later, activity stopped. In September we launched the leaderboard with no promotion at all - no emails - and 6 weeks on we're seeing around 175 completed, from across all departments, and rising.

Turns out there were some technical issues with the package, and before the leaderboard, people who had tried and got stuck, gave up. Now that their performance is slightly more public they are prepared to make slightly more effort. From a support perspective this is a headache, but they are all coming out of the woodwork. They want to know that their score has definitely been recorded. I'm even getting complaints that the weekly update is not often enough.

And is this gamification?

Well no, other than adding a scoreboard, this isn't a game and doesn't try to be. But that doesn't make it less valuable. A better description is pointsification (as coined on the Hide and Seek blog) - a simple way of measuring and assigning scores.

I like this term, because it's also the driving force behind my Never Ending Uni Quiz project and seems equally effective there. It's also a really simple way for anyone to add an additional motivating factor to anything with a measurable 'score'.

And what about the Embarrassment?

A moment of doubt. If they're only completing it because they are embarrassed their department has such a low score, can I really talk about games and playfulness? I'm not adding fun, I'm adding guilt, and that wasn't my intention.

My Kind of Mobile Learning

i.e. when I am mobile and the things I learn on the train. I've been commuting for a month or so now, and feel it's time to reflect on what I have learned from my time on British Rail.

1. How to balance standing up on a moving train
2. That my hips (just) fit into the luggage rack when there is nowhere else to sit.
3. How to be a South-East British train traveller by ignoring everyone around me. (I'm assured this isn't the case in other parts of the country, but it seems on the trains I take you are not allowed to look or speak).
4. That the views you get from the train are fascinating. You get a view of Brighton in particular that you just can't get from anywhere else.
5. How to just be still and think, when there is nowhere to sit and no room to swing a cat (or your book or your iPhone).
6. Patience and to let go of control, if there's a delay, there is nothing you can do but wait for it.
7. A new kind of commuting friendship (apparently you can make new commuter friends as soon as there is a serious enough delay you can talk to all those people you've been ignoring).
8. That the only people who do freely talk are school kids, and that listening to them is utterly fascinating. I'm not sure they live in the same world that I do.
9. That everyone has an iPhone. Ok, not everyone, but they all fish out their phones the minute they sit down. And I would say messaging is more popular than music. I don't see many with headphones, they're all just tapping away (like me).
10. That vicariously living other people's lives can be great fun. One of the people I've never spoken to who catches the same train as me every day (I call him Ben) has a new girlfriend this week. They hold hands on the platform and kiss a lot. I'm very happy for him.

And a few thoughts on the future of train travel:

1. Trains should enforce a PG certificate. The language and unfortunately the violence I have seen and heard on the train this week is unacceptable. I don't know how to influence this.
2. A smile goes a long way. I will endeavour to smile at the people I sit next to and opposite from now on. I won't speak of course, that would really freak them out ;-}

(the photo was taken today at Brighton station about 4pm - the large queue of people in the pen are trying to get to Lewes for the fireworks)