Citizen scientists are not just good at solving complex visual tasks - they have an awesome imagination, which often crosses boundaries of specific tasks & scientific questions!
This can easily be proven by looking at our "funny vessels" collection on our forum... We mentioned it before, and guess what - it keeps growing & getting cooler and cooler!
Check out some of them below or on our Instagram account. .And submit your own on our forum, if you play Stall Catchers, of course! (If you don't yet - you should start today ๐)
A short story from own citizen science experience... While doing my second Masters degree, I joined a EU FP7 project about Learning & Creativity in Citizen Science, for my internship. As part of the project, the consortium consisting of multiple European partners did research on the different cases of creativity that emerges in citizen science projects. It was one of the most interesting things in citizen science ever!
Examples included forum members in Galaxy Zoo joking around & eventually discovering a new type of galaxy - Green Peas; Mapping for Change project participants creating T-shirts to campaign for cleaner air in London, and many more!
Which is why, of course, I'm so excited about the growing collection of "funny vessels" from Stall Catchers !!! ๐
P.S. the findings of the project are presented in this Human Computation *special issue: Creativity & Learning in Citizen Science that I also happened to edit* ๐ฌ