NetGauge Games Platform: Connecting People and Place while Crowdsourcing Broadband Measurements

Collecting measurements of mobile broadband (cellular Internet) performance is critical for efforts addressing digital disparities. However, collecting measurements at the necessary spatiotemporal scales to identify performance and coverage gaps is non-trivial. Crowdsourced data collection is a scalable approach to gathering mobile broadband performance data. However, existing platforms for crowdsourced mobile broadband measurements are not designed to engage workers over time or space, which can lead to spatial misrepresentation, stale data, and, ultimately, inequitable Internet access. With the insight that games and play offer naturally engaging frameworks for users, we iteratively implemented a game platform that collects Internet measurements–NetGauge Games–along with three co-designed broadband measurement games hosted within the platform. We conducted user evaluation of the platform across three locations with 25 participants and measured participants’ connection to people and place using mixed methods. We found that each game's affordances yielded varied movement through space, connection to others, connection to environment, and amount of internet measurements, and we elucidate ultimate design particulars that support these often competing goals. Overall, the games and control performed significantly different from each other regarding number of broadband measurements collected, connection to space, connection to others, radius of gyration, and game rankings.