{"doi":"10.17760/d20560789","title":"Identifying problems in onboarding design for expertise-centric citizen science games","abstract":"In the ECCSG model of scientific research, researchers develop a game which enables citizen scientists to gain a complementary domain expertise that contributes new knowledge to the domain. However, the effectiveness of this model is reliant on the onboarding experience for training and retaining players. Yet, there are few leads on what most needs improving within the onboarding of citizen science games. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to discover what areas of design can be most improved in the onboarding of ECCSG through a design science approach. The driving research questions are: (1) How is ECCSG onboarding currently designed and perceived? (2) What design changes are practically effective in improving ECCSG onboarding? To answer these questions, I use a combination of Games User Research techniques such as surveys, interviews, and cognitive task analysis, in addition to \"close play\" and thematic analysis, in order to build a model of how players perceive and experience the tutorial and the skills they learn from it, extending previous research on player modeling and skill chains. Finally, I test the practical efficacy of the theories produced by implementing design insights into Foldit, a popular ECCSG. While a few features showed promise, such as signaling and dynamic advice, I conclude that the four major components of designing for expertise in ECCSG are practice, community, simplicity, and explanation.--Author's abstract","journal":"OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)","year":2023,"id":414081,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9569,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":486505,"name":"Josh Aaron Miller","orcid":"0000-0001-6783-7567","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":394,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:22:01.321790Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}