Incorporating Crowdsourcing in Design Projects - Term Paper Example

CROWDSOURCING Due Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1. Introduction 4 References 17 18 1.1. Introduction Crowdsourcing can be defined as online models or systems that harness a collective knowledge and intelligence from great populations of individuals with the aim of generating solutions to complex problems (Nakatsu & Grossman, 2013). The subject will be discussed under different labels including human computation, collective intelligence and distributed problem solving among others. This paper will critically examine crowdsourcing in terms of its invention, growth and impacts in the field of interface design, the benefits and challenges of its incorporation in design projects, budgetary and timeline effects to design projects. The paper will further offer solutions concerning generating design interest from online communities and evaluation of skill set and quality of codes submitted by potential unknown users. Lastly, legal, societal and ethical issues related to outsourcing will be discussed, and possible recommendations offered to the solutions. 1.2. Crowdsourcing With the invention and growth of outsourcing, online communities have introduced attractive human-like platforms that directly conduct experiments with the aim of controlling over participants and the environment. This concept operates on the notion of tapping as much knowledge and intelligence as possible from the public to complete complex business-related tasks that would require hiring of third parties or outsourcing. The same sentiments are echoed by Brabham, (2010) who defines crowdsourcing as an ‘online distributed problem solving and production model largely used for business” (para.1). The collective intelligence of the online community is controlled through soliciting of organizational ideas and solutions from such communities through models of open calls. Thus, successive crowdsourcing operates on the assumption of ‘collective intelligence’ and ‘crowd wisdom’. According to Nakatsu and Grossman (2013), the process of crowdsourcing involve individuals / organizations who request and identify problems to be solved or tasks to be performed, broadcasting tasks online by requestors in order to get attention of the online crowds to perform tasks and/or solve already identified problems, and the submission of solutions to the problems by the targeted crowd. After receiving solutions, the requestor carefully examines solutions into meaningful ways especially in cases where there are numerous responses (Allahbakhsh et al., 2013). Crowdsourcing offers a channel through which human computation is utilized as a substitute to solve complex problems that are difficult for computers, but easy for humans (Rahmanian & Davis 2014) 1.3. Impacts of Crowdsourcing on Interface Designs Before we analyze the possible impacts of crowdsourcing on interface designs, the definition of interface designs as computing systems dealing with the process of developing more than two modules in a system with the aim of communicating and connecting (Rogers, Sharp & Preece, 2011) would be relevant to this study. Developed modules might be in forms of software, hardware, or interfaces between users and machines. Interface designs might include control panels or user interfaces (UI) that allow workers to access and contribute to specified tasks. Interfaces in this group could be in the form of Web UI, Application Programme UIs and any other designs which focus on anticipating users on tasks to be performed and ensuring elements are easily accessible, understood and usable to facilitate actions as required by specified users (Allahbakhsh et al., 2013). In this way, user interfaces bring together views from structural, interaction and visual designs in order to attract more users and increase chances of high-quality outcome The impacts of crowdsourcing in the field of interface design have had both positive and negative effects. Small and medium enterprises have greatly succeeded from this model as they lack the luxury and budget to outsource for important services especially when opening doors to their first clients. As a result, they end up crowdsourcing for cheaper services from online platforms. For example, such companies might crowdsource for logo and website designs. This involves the invitation of the online community, especially the ones related to graphic arts to create the product for them at a lower or no fee at all. In a positive outlook, novices might be given a chance to prove their ability to work on some tasks while the job seekers might have an income generating scheme no matter how little they earn from utilizing their skills online. On the other hand, workers are introduced to unwanted competition that is only controlled by the requestor. This also introduces us to the concept that questions the dignity and importance of professionalism in specific fields as armatures, seasoned professionals and hobbyists form part of the communities performing the same tasks as professionals in the same community. Similarly, this tries to sort of demean professionalism by showing that high paying tasks can be completed for little or no commission requestors might choose to go with the lowest bidders. Within interface designs, the adaptation of crowdsourcing has been used both in enterprises and communities. Enterprise crowdsourcing is limited to internal environments by allowing staff members to adapt to user interfaces while community crowdsourcing forces external communities to use the enterprise type (Akiki, Bandara, & Yu, 2013). Therefore, to get the widest benefit from the crowd, a combination of the two types would yield better results. Under UI design level, crowdsourcing is based on sharing and reuse of components. This is based on the notion of assembling a section of the widespread library with the ability to share and reusing components within a community. With the knowledge of the component concept, it would be possible for users to share either information and interface components or both, whether data is present or not. In such a way, application designers are able to actively participate and benefit from the feedback of shared components within the community (Nebeling, Leone & Norrie, 2012). 1.4. Incorporating Crowdsourcing in Design Projects Crowdsourcing has been reported to offer a variety of problem-solving activities when compared to traditional computational approaches. Some of this includes the ability to acquire human inputs over the Internet as problem-solving techniques that are relatively difficult for computers. Despite the number of benefits recorded, the model is exposed to a number of challenges stemming from its professionalism in service provision. This section will look at some benefits and challenges if incorporating crowdsourcing in design projects. 1.4.1. Benefits a) Cost Reduction and Increased Productivity Rather than paying other organizations to carry out specific tasks, crowdsourcing enables requestors (individuals or organizations) get their solutions at minimal costs as crowds are usually willing to perform tasks as requested. Mobile and internet technologies have the ability of integrating crowdsourcing as a means of increasing productivity levels in organizations, reducing training costs, and increasing external support from both public and private sectors (Wang et al., 2012). Proper designed Human Intelligence design projects whose reward is accurate tend to achieve low response time and high-quality results (Franklin et al., 2011). This includes including components that detect and inform users about scam and cheaters, and thus positively affecting workers due to the quality of the requestors. Once more the linkage of crowdsourcing to the internet lessens data collection time and costs incurred from hiring researchers and data collectors. This, therefore, increases productivity and cuts on costs to be incurred. b) Consumer Interaction Through interacting with crowds, companies are able to acquire first-hand insights from their customers and markets. Crowdsourcing basically depends on the internet for tapping the world into the World Wide Web. Thus, requesters use the internet to get feedback from active and passionate customers. This would enable them get into direct contact with their customers and reduce the amount of time they spend collecting data through surveys and questionnaires that after all might be two-faceted. c) Ability to Draw Diversity of Ideas and Perspectives Though collecting different ideas, crowdsourcing helps companies to extract as much information as possible, which in turn helps them in dealing with difficult problems effectively. The ability to utilize large online communities and crowds, requestors are able to obtain creative ideas offered at cheap prices as compared to how professionals would charge. In addition, these ideas are from different workers with different world view perspectives about a task, and thus requestors end up assimilating rich and diversified contents from only one task. 1.4.2. Challenges a) Workers’ Abilities, Qualities, and Performance The outcome of tasks might be greatly affected by the abilities and qualities of workers, which is characterized by their reputation and expertise. Contributors to crowdsourcing might be encompassed with insufficient expertise and skills that hinder the performance of some tasks. Human biases and conflicts of interest might affect information generation in crowdsourcing (Allahbakhsh et al., 2013). Recent research (Wang et al., 2012) indeed indicates that crowdsourcing systems have been subjected to malicious activities such as fraudulent campaigns in support of fake products and people as well as fake social and market reviews. Crowdsourcing might also be affected by ill-defined tasks that are unable to provide requestors with high-quality contributions. As a result, low-quality information is collected. These issues remain fundamental in the field, and solutions would basically stem up from understanding the factors that influence the quality and define quality control approached utilized in crowdsourcing designs and systems. It is clearly evident that workers’ performance influences the overall crowdsourcing task execution. Realistically, we would think that monetary incentives would primarily motivate workers to decrease the time required while maintain desired results. However, this has not been the situation as in some applications as identified by Rahmanian & Davis (2014); high-quality responses do not necessarily translate to high rewards or monetary incentives. Research studies by Franklin et al., (2011) indeed report cases, where an increase in payment resulted in reduced demand for tax as high rewards, were synonymous to high complexity tasks. Therefore, workers opted to keep off tasks so as to avoid cognitive depression. b) Latency in design systems The time interval between initiating and transmitting a job to crowdsourcing platforms and detecting the results and responses from workers could take hours to days. This is because of the difference in time between the time between sending of the task to the platform and the receipt of the task by some workers, who then guided by their motivation begin working on the task, and the time workers take time to complete the task until they transmit the results back to you. Thus, the total execution time is highly depended on the task’s design and rewards and may affect the completion time required by a task giver. c) Low-Quality Work In crowdsourcing, requestors have the power to examine carefully solutions into meaningful ways especially in cases where there are numerous responses. However, most of these solutions do not originate from professionals and may lack professionalism. As earlier identified, crowdsourcing is commonly an option for small and medium enterprises who aim at getting cheaper or free services from the online community. Regarding this, it is possible that most professions would not attempt to offer free and unrewarding services, and so solutions offered would lack a taste of professionalism just as the saying ‘free is cheap’. In addition, just as a large number is involved in solution seeking, requestors might get mixed up by the similar solutions offered and end up choosing ones that might be the best to them, but not according to a professional. Thus, there exists an issue regarding professionalism versus the quality of work produced. d) Determining the Success of an Idea Even though crowdsourcing may have the ability to draw a diversity of ideas and perspectives, these ideas might necessarily not be of any benefit to the requestors. Instead, these ideas might be burdensome as participants might range from novices to professional and thus making it impossible for requestors to select the best solutions to suit their needs. 1.4.3. Solutions a) Generating design interest from online communities To generate design interest from online communities, it is important to make real-time applications that continually recruits workers and keeps them busy with other available tasks. This ensures that workers are able to get tasks as soon as they arrive and send back their responses and solutions immediately as opposed to sending tasks when a worker probably got bored of waiting for a task and left your site. For example, Rahmanian & Davis (2014) comment quikTurkit for its ability to post tasks using different titles or rewards and tries to keep tasks posted on its first page of search results. This calls attention to the online community as throughout they are kept busy by tasks. Thus, responses are received in real-time and low costs. I would also incorporate an area where questions and can be answered directly, provide users with the ability to vote for the best answer just in case there are multiple answers for the tasks. b) Evaluating skill set and quality of codes submitted by potential unknown users Evaluation of skills set and quality of codes submitted by online communities might be very tenuous as solutions for evaluation must aim at getting the best solutions. This would include obtaining credible references of intending workers from tasks accomplished in the past. A background search and critical analysis of score and feedback from previous works could perhaps help in determining their credibility before selecting such codes. In addition, a close look at their resume and client feedback could be helpful in determining client ranking and their ability to deal with tasks professionally. Measuring input would also help in evaluating the ability of a requestor to rely on knowledge and skills from users. Getting solutions does not necessarily stand for successful crowdsourcing but would rather require more ‘crowd’ participation mechanisms to move it closer to complete solution obtained from crowdsourcing. Further, the solution would be subjected and placed into the problem solving process by subjecting the requestor to determine if the solution indeed solved a problem, allows them to move forward on a project, the outcomes, and its impacts to the project. Thus, once a solution is evaluated and surpasses expectations, then success could be celebrated. 1.5. Effects of Crowdsourcing on budgets and timeline of design projects Effects of crowdsourcing on budgets and timelines of design projects is highly depended on set timetables and budgetary constraints that requestors who might be individuals or companies work with. Effective and reliable crowdsourcing takes time as workers need to do their research well, and responses need to be sieved in order to make comparisons and pick the best responses. Just as more time is requires, money must be synonymous to the amount of time. The development of a well thought out plan and community management resources also determine the length of time and budget to exhaust. Projects timeline is an important factor for requestors in crowdsourcing as mechanisms can be put into place in order to help workers simplify tasks, complete and hand in results within the shortest possible period. In some cases that workers working on a design project do not necessarily feel motivated to complete the task due to the task design or reward, the crowdsourcing system latency or the timeline for completing the task may be increased. Just as earlier indicated, successive crowdsourcing operates on the assumption of ‘collective intelligence’ and ‘crowd wisdom’. Therefore, it is common that requestors place similar tasks to more than one worker to get quality responses. In the case that this fails, they have to re-send the task until they get high quality desired responses. When such a situation presents itself, crowdsourcing tasks become more costly to the requestor and the completion time is dragged (Rahmanian & Davis, 2014). Therefore, it is important that requestors use their best inputs and carefully determine actions to take through choosing the right audiences and establishing community interests as measures of limiting budgetary overspending. 1.6. Issues related to crowdsourcing 1.6.1. Ethical According to Silberman Irani & Ross (2010), research on human computation focuses mainly on problems facing requestors and workers’ motivation and performance. Even though such research data may make sense sociologically where most researchers are requestors, it is critically important to analyze problems questioning ethics that workers face. The first ethical related issue is employers who do not pay for work done by workers. In crowdsourcing, it is not a guarantee that workers will receive their payment as the terms and conditions provide that employers (requestors) pay once they are satisfied with the results. Even with their satisfaction, some still go ahead and deny the work under the pretense of dissatisfaction. The workers’ needs are placed at the mercy of the requestor and thus making them vulnerable of their employers. In addition, due to the availability of thousands of workers, an employer reject workers with unspecific messages at any time and thus reduces their wage and lowers their ability to get more work. Online systems are also prone to hackers who subject user accounts to malware, wage theft, and sale of personal information. Silberman Irani & Ross (2010) identify the ability of Mechanical Turk users in identifying illegitimate tasks as a means of staying safe when choosing among jobs. Interestingly, time limits for tasks introduce workers to unethical and unreasonable working condition and thus lower their effectiveness and in turn affecting their wage and reputation. In addition, all administrators’ errors are paid by the workers who might not get any response just in case they want to reject an incomplete work. 1.6.2. Legal As earlier discussed, crowdsourcing takes into consideration the ideals of open sourcing. However, in the contemporary world, crowdsourcing encompasses labor models. One of the fundamental intersections between crowdsourcing and the law is in labor and employment law (Wolfson & Lease, 2011). In line with this, the existence of an extensive labor market could probably see the crowdsourcing industry face labor regulations over employment in the near future. Persons and companies seeking crowd labor might see the benefits at their first sight, but it is important that the awareness of potential workers as “employees” be determined despite the fact that there lacks clarity on the classification of crowd workers as employees under labor laws. Crowdsourcing also intersects with the legal regulation regarding the patent law. With the improvement of the field, more sophisticated methods are introduces and in turn call the attention of a more skilled labor force, which in turn increases productivity levels. Research and development of patentable interventions would be a major challenge as more people are working on one task, which in turn might produce similar results. In such instances, the line between the founder and co-founder cannot be drawn, and the contribution of everyone must be included in the patent application. Lastly, having multiple persons working on a single task might raise significant questions regarding joint ownership. Sharing of information between businesses and their crowds with the aim of strengthening research and development is likely to expose such businesses to concerns related to data security. Innovation ideas might introduce researchers to business customers, and users and in turn violate data security regulations. Crowdsourcing might be an effective way to source creative works, but copyright issues may arise when workers submit same content in different crowdsourcing platforms and thus making it difficult for a particular piece of work to be owned and patented. It is possible that requestor loose crowd developed creative works just in case they are unaware of the copyright laws applicable original works (Wolfson & Lease, 2011). Crowdsourcing also introduces the risks of being on the wrong side of the law in as far much as securities regulations is concerned. It introduces the concept of crowdfunding through online campaigns and advertisements that may run into federal rules on securities. Crowds might be used to give generously while requestors use the funds for their self-interests. Users might also be lured into offering certain incentives to encourage donations. 1.6.3. Societal Crowdsourcing systems often rely on worker anonymity that makes them act as similar entities. Interestingly, homogenous populations have the ability to make better responses than diverse ones. Moreover, the idea of hiding worker identities acts as a tool of separating workers from task requestors and may lead to potential exploitation of workers as requestors often offer lower and unfair prices and in extreme cases refuse to pay for completed tasks. This in turn dehumanizes workers who may in turn seek for better and effective ways of dealing interacting with the populations. Social issues mainly rise when crowdsourcing affect a member person who is a member of the society. Societal employment levels are also affected as instead of requestors and companies outsourcing and hiring professionals; they end up crowdsourcing from cheaper and reliable novices who offer similar services. 1.7. Solutions to Issues While the issues discussed above might push one to seek legal redress, it is important that crowd workers opt that as the last resort by empowering themselves with the following preventable solutions. a) Being Alert of Laws It is natural for one to be excited and rush into new opportunities and technologies, it would be equally important to have a background check of legal regulations surrounding the new territories. Even though there may be inadequate information about the legality of worker – employee relationships in crowdsourcing, it is clearly evident that elements of existing legal regulations directly touch on various dimensions of the model. Besides, the field is slowly evolving and fitting into the current legal dimensions that protect both users and clients. b) Cultivating Virtues of Honesty and Openness The exposure of workers into business data acts as a risk to information protection. To avoid crossing links with the law, it is important that crowdsourcers develop the virtues of honesty when handling important company data and avoid malicious actions. This would also include the protection of any acquired form of data in line with laws regarding protecting data security. c) Defining Working Relationships Employer-employee relationships are well explained in contracts, which act as binding documents for both the parties. These documents define the relationship between the two parties before the beginning of any work. This would enable workers safeguard their rights to their inventions. 1.8. Conclusion In summary, crowd work might be accomplished within a short duration of time. However, its impacts are momentous and will be felt for generations. Within interface designs, crowdsourcing has so far proven to perform spread tasks to a group of people or community, who in turn offer solutions, according to their specialization and expertise. It is indeed evident that the field is indeed growing to cater for commercial needs, and human populations are even taking it as part of their full-time employment and source of income. It ought to be noted that even despite the numerous challenges that the model is facing, crowdsourcing is slowly evolving and undertaking professional outsourcing. References Akiki, P., Bandara, A. & Yu, Y. (2013). Crowdsourcing user interface adaptations for minimizing the bloat in enterprise applications. In: Fifth ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2013), 24–27 June 2013, London, UK. Allahbakhsh, M., & Benatallah, B., Motahari-Nezhad, H., Bertino, E. & Dustdar, S. (2013). Quality Control in Crowdsourcing Systems. Issues and Directions. The IEE Computer Society. [Available at]. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.353.919&rep=rep1&type=pdf Franklin, J., Kraska, T., Xin, R., Ramesh, S., & Kossmann, D. (2011). CrowdDB: Answering Queries with Crowdsourcing. Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of data SIGMOD ’11, New York, NY, USA, pp. 61–72. Brabham, D. C. (2010). The effectiveness of crowdsourcing public participation in a planning context. Available at SSRN 1709555. Nakatsu, R. & Grossman, E. (2013). Designing Effective User Interfaces for Crowdsourcing: An Exploratory Study. Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Interaction Design, 8016, pp: 221-229 Nebeling, M., Leone, S., & Norrie, M. C. (2012). Crowdsourced web engineering and design. In Web Engineering (pp. 31-45). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Rahmanian, B., & Davis, G. (2014). 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