Microworkers Crowdsourcing Approach, Challenges and Solutions

ABSTRACT

Founded in May 2009, Microworkers.com is an international Crowdsourcing platform focusing on Microtasks. At present, more than 600,000 users from over 190 countries have already registered to our platform. This extensively diverse workforce is the key to the current success of Microworkers as it gives opportunity to our clients to draw widely varying experiences and knowledge from a large, heterogeneous audience in arriving at innovative solutions. With the explosion of social media, mobile apps and online digital technology, the communication channels on how modern-day workers and tech-savvy consumers have profoundly changed. With that, how businesses communicate with their consumers, and to their employees, have also greatly transformed. While innovation remains the hallmark of staying competitive, the power of crowdsourcing is becoming more widely recognized because of the broad participation that takes place at relatively minimal costs. This brilliant mass collaboration approach allows companies to generate solutions from freelance professionals who get paid only if you utilize their ideas. Crowdsourcing lets any business, of any size and nature, tap into the collective intelligence of global crowds in order to complete business related tasks that a company would normally either perform itself or outsource to a third-party provider. It has become more possible to optimize multimedia systems more rapidly and to address human factors more effectively. Not only it allows businesses to expand the size of their talent pool, it is also a time and resource-efficient method to gain deeper insight into what direct consumers really want.

In crowdsourcing platforms, there is perfect meritocracy. Especially in systems like Microworkers; age, gender, race, education, and job history does not matter, as the quality of work is all that counts; and every task is available to Users of every imaginable background. If you are capable of completing the required Microtask, you've got the job. For the past five years, Microworkers have effortlessly given opportunities to countless individuals across the globe whom are either looking for a temporary source of income, supplemental income or in many instances, main source of livelihood. While making opportunities available to eager, talented Workers and at the same time providing cost-effective solutions to job providers, Microworkers creates a win-win structure to anyone who believes can take advantage of its system. Apart from serving as a platform that connects Workers Employers, over time Microworkers Users have formed communities that provide support and assistance to fellow Users. Though having a large diverse workforce is the framework for delivering solutions to our clients, the same pose challenges both on our underlying infrastructure, as well as on providing support. Many other challenges arise in crowdsourcing set ups due to the fact that a community of users (or Microworkers) is a complex and dynamic system highly sensitive to changes in the form and the parameterization of their activities. Microworkers' present approach in dealing with these challenges include identification of optimal crowd members, ensuring clear directions and requirements, designing incentive structures that are not conducive to cheating, among many others.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)