Prize Draws for the Safe Blues Experiment at UoA

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The rules*

As you participate in the Safe Blues experiment you collect hours which increase your chances of winning prizes. The more hours you collect the higher your chances. Here is how it works:

When you run the Safe Blues app on or close to the University of Auckland City Campus (within the geo-fenced area), you collect campus hours for each phase (see details of the phases below). Every hour you run the app on campus is another hour collected.
Your campus hours are accumulated since joining or since the start of the current phase.
Note that the collection of campus hours is during May 4, 2021 until June 9, 2022 with the exception of:
- The days of June 10 to July 18, 2021 (inter-semester break).
- September 16, 2021 to February 28, 2022 (end of Semester 2 in 2021 under lockdown and summer break).
The collection is broken up into 5 phases and hours are counted separately per phase.

Phase 1 is during May 1 - June 10, 2021.
Phase 2 is during July 18 - September 16, 2021.
Phase 3 is voided as it is during a major lockdown (it was orginally planned for the second half of semester 2, 2021).
Phase 4 is during June 10 - September 08, 2022.
Phase 5 is during September 09 - November 03, 2022.

You may collect up to 200 campus hours per phase.
A maximum of 10 campus hours per day can be collected.
Your campus hours are converted to eligible hours as follows:
- Each of your first 20 campus hours counts for 2 eligible hours. That is, after your first 20 campus hours you will have at least 40 eligible hours.
- After your first 20 campus hours, each additional campus hour counts as 1 eligible hour.
You may obtain more eligible hours via the invite a friend mechanism.

After you accumulated 20 campus hours, you may invite up to 10 friends to join the experiment and receive bonus eligible hours.
For every friend you invite, after they collect 20 campus hours, you receive 5 additional eligible hours.
The mechanism for inviting a friend is by generating a 6 digit invite code and asking them to enter that code when they register.
Your invited friend will receive 5 eligible hours when they sign up with your anonymized invite code.

Each phase with the exception of phase 3, has a prize draw. The prize draws are performed on the following dates: June 10, 2021 for phase 1, Sep 16, 2021 for phase 2, September 08, 2022 for phase 4, and November 03, 2022 for phase 5. Additionally in place of phase 3 which was voided due to lockdown, there is a special prize draw on Dec 16 (see details below).
In each prize draw (for phases 1, 2, 4, and 5), prizes are drawn as follows**:

Your chance of winning a prize is your eligible hours divided by the total number of eligible hours of all participants.
There are 9 prizes in each draw. A single top prize (iPad Pro), 3 second tier prizes (Android mobile phones), and 5 third tier prizes (FitBit tracker).
You may win at most one prize in a draw and this works as follows. First everyone competes for the top prize and the winner is removed from the pool. Then all remaining participants compete for the second tier prizes, each time removing the winner. Similarly for the third tier.
A participant is eligible to win at most a single prize from each tier over the course of the experiment. For instance, a winner of the top prize in the first draw will be excluded from winning the top prize in draws that follow (but may still win other prizes).

Participants can track both their collected campus hours and eligible hours per phase and see how many hours they have collected relative to the distribution of hours collected by other participants. This can give an indication of the participants' chances for winning prizes.
All participants will be e-mailed a full report from the prize draw and the winners may collect their prizes at a given location in The University of Auckland.
Winners will be asked if they wish to have their picture and short bio posted. This is optional.
There is a special prize draw in place of phase 3. The draw is on December 16, 2021. In this prize draw 10 participants will have a chance to win a FitBit tracker. The prize draw is performed by uniformly selecting 10 winners among all participants that have accumulated 5 or more campus hours during the period of phase 2, and are still running the Safe Blues app.

* We reserve the right to change these parameters for the third prize draw to maximize equity.
** The source code used for the prize draw can be found here.

Some testimonials of prize winners from Phases 4 and 5*

* Subject to individual participant approval.

Dave: My name is Dave. I am a Bachelor of Engineering student who specialises in Software Engineering. I was introduced to the Safe Blues project through my Part IV project coordinator. As a student who was also undertaking a research project, I was very keen to help out with this interesting project. Using Safe Blues was a no fuss. The application ran in the background doing all the work by itself. Being entered in a draw for some free prizes was a bonus. Overall, I was glad to input towards a meaningful project and I hope that this project continues to head towards success.

Liza: My name is Liza. I am currently a Bachelor of Commerce student at the University of Auckland. One of my statistics lecturers introduced this app during a lecture and I decided to download the app. It has been a pleasure to participate in the experiment. I am glad I could take part in a large project like this as a part of the UoA community. I wish my participation helped with this research project.

Cushla McGoverin: I am a senior research fellow in the Department of Physics, and the Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, at the University of Auckland. I use spectroscopy to study foods, bacteria, biological tissue and pretty much anything where rapid non-destructive measurements are advantageous. I learnt about the Safe Blues experiment in phase one through an email a friend forwarded because they thought I would be interested. The need to improve scientific understanding of how social mobility and epidemic spread interact is clearly important and by merely downloading and running an app I could help researchers in their endeavor to improve this understanding, hence I downloaded the app and have been running it ever since. I look forward to reading the overall findings of Safe Blues and what it has discovered about the interaction of social mobility and epidemic spread.

Bahar Sarmadi: My name is Bahar Sarmadi, and I am a PhD candidate in Wine Science at the University of Auckland. I am writing to express my sincere gratitude for being selected as a winner in your research project. I would like to extend my sincerest appreciation for providing me with the opportunity to participate in this project, particularly as it relates to the current pandemic, and for the generous prize. The ease of installing the app on my phone made it possible for me to participate with minimal effort, and I am glad I could be a part of this project. I hope that the results from this project will contribute to a greater understanding and, ultimately, help in some way. As a participant, I understand the importance of helping others with their research. I am committed to positively impacting the scientific community by lending my support to research efforts where possible. I believe that participation from others is essential to good science, and I would hope that if my research requires crowd support in the future, others will also get involved.

Janelle E: Hi I'm Janelle, a first-year Master's student studying Ecology at UoA. I joined SafeBlues after seeing a poster about it near the start of the experiment. I love joining in on research, and this one was a no-brainer considering how so easy it was to participate and also the chance for cool prizes. It was pretty interesting watching my hours on campus accumulate and seeing how it compared to other participants - I was surprised to see some people spend a looot of time on campus! It'll be cool to see what comes out of this project. And what a lovely surprise to actually win something...I've been thinking of getting a Fitbit for a while now, so I'm absolutely stoked to have actually won one! It's absolutely made my day :D

Nadia Kennington: I am a professional staff member who works in Assessment Services, although I came across Safe Blues in my previous role in the School of Psychology. I thought it was a really interesting study, and an easy way to contribute to research that will hopefully support public health in the future. It will be really interesting to see what outcomes are reached, and to know that I was one of the people who let myself get “infected” for Science!

Natalie Jones: I'm Natalie Jones, a final year BA/BSc conjoint student majoring in mathematics, music, and education. I joined this study in 2021 after hearing about it from one of my lecturers. Knowing how important it is to have a large group to collect data from, I decided to sign up. It was so easy - only having to download an app - that I hardly had to think about it. I also knew that the research would be important and I am glad to have been a part of it. I want to thank the Safe Blues team for what they are doing and I hope that this study has been helpful.

Logan Andrewes: I'm Logan. I work in research management for Auckland UniServices. Participation in the Safe Blues experiment took no effort at all. Since joining the experiment a couple of years ago, it has been interesting to see trends in my time spent on campus and how that compared with other participants, especially alongside changes in alert levels and changing habits and preferences for working from home. I'm glad to have been able to contribute in some minor way to our understanding of the effect of incidental contact/proximity on the potential spread of viruses.

Some testimonials of prize winners from the special prizes (draw of December 16)*

* Subject to individual participant approval.

Cushla McGoverin: I am a senior research fellow in the Department of Physics, and the Dodd Walls Centre, at the University of Auckland. I use spectroscopy to study foods, bacteria, biological tissue and pretty much anything where rapid non-destructive measurements are advantageous. I learnt about the Safe Blues experiment in phase one through an email a friend forwarded because they thought I would be interested. The need to improve scientific understanding of how social mobility and epidemic spread interact is clearly important and by merely downloading and running an app I could help researchers in their endeavor to improve this understanding, hence I downloaded the app and have been running it ever since. Thanks to the Safe Blues team for their work and I look forward to seeing what the Safe Blues team learns through the future phases.

Rhys McArthur-Tomes: I'm Rhys, a student at UoA taking a Bachelor of Advanced Science in Computational Biology. I keep an eye out for research to participate in, because if I ever need human participants I hope other students will be looking to help. Safe Blues is probably the easiest I've joined, since I just let it run on my phone. We also get to see the results of the experiment which interests me as a science student, and we can contribute to research to eventually help our community.

Some testimonials of prize winners from Phase 2 (draw of September 16)*

* Subject to individual participant approval.

Jacob King: My name is Jacob King and I'm a first year doing a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and criminology. When my stats lecturers mentioned this experiment I figured that i might as well sign up. It has been a easy process, and it is nice to be in a study that helps everyone out and maybe win a prize as well.

Daniella Joven: I'm Daniella Joven and I'm a 2nd year BSci student majoring in Computer Science. My friend was actually the one who introduced me to the Safe Blues project and asked me to join. I thought "why not?" it seemed like a cool experiment and it let my phone do all the work. Might aswell get more benefit and help out for going to my classes haha. It was pretty easy to set up too! Hope the data helped out with the study :))

Thomas Grant: My name is Thomas Grant, I am a 4th year PhD candidate studying medicinal chemistry. I feel it is always good to help others with their research where possible. A lot of good science requires participation from others and if any of my research required crowd support in the future I would hope others get involved, so I feel as though it's important to pay-it-forward. This research is especially topical due to the current pandemic and being able to help by doing something as simple as having an app run on my phone was really easy. I am happy to have been able to be part of this project and hope the results from it go on to help in some way.

Jaynie Yang: Hello, my name is Jaynie, I’m currently doing a masters in environmental science at UoA. I was introduced to Safe Blues by my sister and thought it seemed like a no fuss, easy experiment to participate in because it simply runs in the background. It’s nice to be able to contribute to scientific research and have the chance to win prizes along the way (woohoo!).

Some testimonials of prize winners from Phase 1 (draw of June 10)*

* Subject to individual participant approval.

Andrew Battley: I'm a current Honours student in Chemistry, studying main group polymers with the Leitao Lab, and working as a GTA for a first year Engineering course. I've recently completed a BE(Hons)/BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry here at UoA, so I'm always excited to get involved with research across as many fields as I can. This experiment seemed a great opportunity to be a data-point in what seems a very relevant and important experiment, with minimal active input required from myself. I understand just how useful it can be to have more data when you're building a model, so figured why not help out where I can? As a Vice President of the Auckland University Tramping Club, I have also observed just how disruptive Covid has been to our student clubs and societies, so I hope this research brings a greater understanding of viral spread that can help us in planning and responding to such crises in the future. It's going to be really interesting to see what results come of this experiment, and the ongoing research!

Hadas Livne: My name is Hadas Livne and I'm a first year BSci student majoring in Computer Science. I came across Safe Blues as I was taking STATS101 as a part of my degree and saw that volunteers were needed. It's been a pleasure participating in this experiment, the app was very easy to install. I hope the information has helped out :)

Michael Connaughton: I'm a mechanical engineer. I came to the University of Auckland to study psychology and computer science. Our statistics lecturer mentioned this study around the time they were teaching us about the challenges of enrolling research participants and various sampling problems. So I signed up partially out of guilt, but also it's nice to contribute to pandemic related research without having to really do anything different. For the amount of effort involved (install an app), the prizes are really generous. I'm supprised more people aren't signed up - and though I'd selfishly like to maximise my odds of winning something again in the next couple of phases - it'd be cool to know they were getting data for as large a sample size as possible. So again out of guilt, I'd encourage people at UoA to get involved : P

Natalie Jones: I am a third year BA/BSc Conjoint student majoring in Mathematics, Music, and Education. When one of my lecturers mentioned this experiment in class, I figured that signing up wouldn't hurt and I could potentially win cool stuff! It has been a simple process, and it is cool to be helping contribute to a study that might help everyone out in the long term :)

Zihao Zhang: I'm a third-year Stats major who likes free stuff :) I'm very happy that I won a new phone (never expected tbh...). Statistically speaking, the more hours you record, the higher your chance of winning a price, so give it a go! After all you do not lose anything by trying :)