Mobile Social Sciences
Mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) are indispensable in our lives. We rely on mobile devices in our jobs, classrooms, and every day personal matters. We use them more and more. The Era of Mobiles is already here – this is an undisputable fact.
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As social scientists (economists, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, etc.), we need to adapt to this new era. Modern technology not only provides enormous opportunities to conduct research in social sciences, but also changes how we conduct research. It is time for Mobile Social Sciences and Mobile Experiments.
Mobile Experiment
What is it?
A mobile experiment is an innovative method to conduct research. It is the gamification of a research question in the form of an app for mobile devices. A mobile experiment helps to answer a scientific question while providing entertainment to its users. The data collected is used to conduct research and write scientific papers, while preserving the anonymity of the participants. 
Scientific advantages
There are several scientific advantages of mobile experiments over traditional laboratory experiments
  • Better experiments. Instead of a couple of dozen of college students, with mobile experiments, we can potentially reach millions of people with diversified backgrounds (age, nationality, education, etc.). This is very important in order to have a representative sample, to avoid sample selection bias, and to test differences across population types.
  • Novel scientific questions. When people are just one click away from an experiment, we can conduct studies that are very difficult in the traditional laboratory setting. For example, long-term or repeated experiments; experiments which require mobility of participants; or experiments with novel data generated by wearable accessories.
  • Revise and modify on the go. Mobile experiments can be modified while they are still being conducted. This is important if, for example, the initial results of the experiment indicate that a re-design is necessary in order to answer additional questions.
  • Experiments evolve with technology. Technological innovations focused on mobile devices – VR, AR, and everything else we can't imagine today – open many doors for important and interesting research projects. Mobile experiments allow us to use that technology in the pursuit of scientific progress.
Blues and Reds
Our first mobile experiment
Every day, people, firms, institutions, and governments interact with each other. If what a person receives (in terms of money or happiness) depends not only on his/her actions, but also on what others do, then we say that this person faces an interactive problem. Every day each of us solves interactive problems: from the US government designing trade policy to Wal-Mart setting prices to Roger Federer choosing his strategy in a match against Novak Djokovic. Game theory is a field of economics and mathematics that focuses on such interactive problems.

We created Blues and Reds to understand which interactive problems people are able to solve and, consequently, to discover what makes one interactive problem more complex than another. Our main objective is twofold: First, to identify the percentages of users who are able to win levels in Blues and Reds; Second, to understand what determines these percentages. Our research project is about the fundamental questions in economics. Addressing these questions is important because it will allow us to develop better theories of interactive behavior.

When you play Blues and Reds, you not only spend time in a fun way while learning about your own strategic abilities, but also you are a crucial part of this fascinating and innovative research. 
Data we collect
Data provided by the users:
  • age*
  • gender
  • country
  • Facebook page

​Data generated by the users:
  • Levels won and levels lost

​* While we do not impose age restrictions on who can play Blues and Reds, we do not knowingly use data from people younger than 18 years old. Nor do we knowingly collect their personal information; if we learn that we have inadvertently gathered personal data from people under 18 years of age, we will take reasonable measures to promptly delete such personal data from our records.
Results of research project
After you have played Blues and Reds, you might be interested in the scientific analysis based on the game. After all, you have been part of a new and exciting research adventure. These are the papers we have written so far: