Answer To: Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing in the field of interface design takes tasks traditionally performed by...
Neha answered on Mar 15 2021
Crowdsourcing
The invention and growth of crowdsourcing in the field of interface design
Crowdsourcing can be defined as using ideas of different people over the platform to design a better system. It has already been discussed under various labels like open innovation, collective intelligence, mass collaboration, human computation and distributed problem solving and many others. It includes the harnessing of the collection of intelligence and knowledge shared by a large number of individuals to generate more efficient and effective solution for a relatively complex problem. Crowdsourcing is used by different companies and users and they have reported is to be efficacious in a variety of problems and it has worked more effectively when compared with pure computational approaches for same problems. It acquires human inputs and aggregate them over the internet to solve the complex problems or sometimes aspects of the problems which are difficult for the computers but easier for human being (Brabham, D. C.). These problems can be of image analysis, natural language processing and speech recognition. The Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT or MTurk) and Crowdflower are examples of platforms that implement microtask-based crowdsourcing. In the AMT the requesters can specify the requirements for the task, amount of time they can pay and a deadline to finish the task and on the other side the workers can search for the available tasks and select them if they find interesting or rewarding. This method helps the requesters to find a better labor across a wide physical distribution and for the workers it allows for flexible step in and out of working without having any formal relationship.
The user interface design involves greater significance of the crowdsourcing as the tasks are performed by a large number of globally dispersed. The number of online services which helps the people to find paid online contractor is growing. There is a long range of platforms for crowdwork such as CrowdFlower, Fiverr or TaskRabbit. The crowdwork slightly contrast with other forms of the crowdsourcing. It includes more activities like serious games or citizen science which motivates the user to step in besides working only for the money. An example of this can be the project New York Public Library which wanted to digitize the historical menus from the library’s archives. The benefit which they got was to transcribe 8,700 menus in just 4 months which is not possible for a single person. The users were allowed to click on the menu item for a digitized image and write about it and then submit.
Kittur and colleagues have recently published a new model of the crowdwork. It articulates a number of research areas. These research areas include workflow which support task decomposition, synthesis and dependence, assigning task to match the abilities of workers and skills related with tasks, hierarchy to create leadership structures, real-time tasks supported with latency, synchronous collaboration, reputation and credentials, design task and job to maintain interest, quality control and motivation and rewards for the workers. It is important to consider the ethical issues which arises due to the power imbalance between requesters and workers on different crowdwork platforms and also the worker rights outside of traditional employment arrangements. The characteristics of crowdwork are high turnover and nascence as the workers can come and go by participating in the task of their accord. These arrangements are for the short-term end of planned permanence. The research challenger posited by Kittur also includes few dimensions of the MoCA framework. These dimensions can be how to support crowdwork which is high in synchronicity and the assignment of tasks to diverse labour force.
The impact that crowdsourcing has had on the field of interface design
Crowdsourcing is a result of collaborative production in the world of web 2.0 and user generated content (Gatautis, R., & Vitkauskaite, E.). The crowdsourcing breaks down a complex job into multiple sub tasks which are then shared with multiple workers via public solicitation. The most common example of this can be the Wikipedia where each entry is considered as the part of task being solicited. Sometimes workers even do it for the free due to their interest or work can be fun for them. However, there are not much successful examples of volunteer crowdsourcing. This results in heavy financial compensation, usually in the form of micro-payments in the order of few cents per task. Amazon Mechanical Turk used this model where multiple tasks can be done quickly at a cheaper cost. All types of relevance experiments in the information retrieval form and related areas are currently conducted by ATM. Alonso and R. Baeza-Yates running experiments in conjunction with the flexibility of the editorial approach at a larger scale, makes this approach very attractive for testing new ideas with a fast turnaround. The workers in AMT have a choice to select a job of their interest from the multiple jobs available on the portal. A brief description about the task is placed with the job name. The unit of work per task is known as Human Intelligence task.
After the era of world wide 2.0, the user interfaces for the websites and web-based applications need to be of best design. The user interfaces are given a peculiar importance. Crowdsourcing came in to the picture when the general interest of the people in the user interface started to propel. The impact of crowdsourcing was on different areas including the user interface design. Many people have used it to design their interface and considers the crowdsourcing as an alternative to hire people for their jobs. Without crowdsourcing, the users have to go and search for the right design company via the internet. It is very time consuming. Then they have to check for their portfolio, past works, similar projects and so on. The second process which would take consume a long time is describing them about the process. There is a lot of difference in the communication of the requirements needs and the design agency. This process also requires legal formalities and mutual agreement which is also a time consuming and expensive task. In the crowdsourcing the task, amount and deadline are shared via the portal and interested person can take the task. They don’t require any formal employment agreement.
Benefits of incorporating crowdsourcing in a design project
Here are few benefits of incorporating the crowdsourcing in design project
1) Dozens of design options
The graphic designer is expensive and also provides a limited design choice. He will mainly share 2-3 design concepts. To choose the company’s logo we have only option left is to choose one out of them. The money is paid to the designer in advance so we have to pick up the design from one of them. But crowdsourcing makes us free from this restriction. We meet many people during the crowdsourcing for our design. The different designers give different designs for the interface. Crowdsourcing helps us to get different designs and select one from them or multiple.
2) Fast Access to design
The process of design is very fast via crowdsourcing. We can get our selected design within on or two weeks. We can set our own deadline for the workers to get the design accordingly. A start-up needs the design as soon as possible while the graphic designer takes much more time for it.
3) Better creative environment
A graphic designer may compromise on the design to fulfil your requirement and create a design in a certain way. But in crowdsourcing there are many different designers working on the design project. The designers do not know the client personally. They can use their creative powers to pick up the design, colour, typefaces etc. The clients do not have any right to dictate the designers. The designers can work freely and use their skills without...