Future of Web Design: crowdsourcing is community with a point

Jeff Howe, a contributing editor at Wired, and author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business defines crowdsourcing as

the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

At the Future of Web Design Conference this week,  Derek Powazek gave a great presentation about how to use and leverage “Crowdsourcing”.

Derek’s simple definition of crowdsourcing is ”community with a point”.  In his presentation, he gave us information and tips on how to manage the Wisdom of Crowds and what makes crowdsourcing work.  Here is an overview:

1. Interface is everything. How you interface with your crowd is important. You have to be very specific about what you ask your community to do.  He used the Assignment Zero Project as an example:  A crowd of volunteers were asked to write articles and stories and submit them.  Without more instruction than that, it resulted in a lot of confusion and very few submissions.  Without concrete instruction or having a point, no one really knew what to do or what was required.  As soon as the instructions became more specific, with clear and concrete objectives and parameters, the writers started researching, writing, and submitting stories to the site.
2. Avoid groupthink – Diversity of ideas, many opinions, critical thinking and different points of view are the value of “crowdsourcing”. Groupthink limits the diversity of opinions and does not leverage the knowledge or talent or creativity of the crowd.  As the creator and moderator of your community it is your responsibility to encourage everyone to think on their own, offer new ideas, and think critically on the issues that you are presenting.
3. Know your audience – Derek used a great example to illustrate this point.  Chevy Tahoe wanted to get their community involved to create a Chevy Tahoe ad that would be used in the real world but instead of limiting the participants to Chevy Tahoe owners, they allowed everyone and anyone to participate.  The results were a catastrophe and quite unexpected.
   The lesson:  Know your specific audience. Know who you want to get opinions from. Often times you want to limit the creative power of “crowdsourcing” to a very specific community as in this case – Chevy should have only asked Tahoe owners to participate.
4. Design for selfishness – Participants become a part the community for their own reasons…selfish, self-serving reasons (promotion, fun, personal connection, ego)  and you have to leverage that.  Tagging systems are a great example of self-serving functionality…to be found. Derek used Flickr’s tagging system as an example of letting the crowd use tagging for an easier way to find photos and to promote them. Derek stated: “The reason photographers on Flick embraced the tagging system was to help them find their own photographs. And it was that selfishness in the functionality that made the site more useable”
5. Prevent people from gaming the community system.  Every community system that takes user input for ratings or rankings etc. can be gamed or cheated and you need to figure out how to aggregate data, input, and the opinions of the crowd without letting any one person or group of people influence the outcome. Here are two examples:
   1. Slashdot’s karma points were a great comment posting reward system until they made the system public. When they made the system public, people could figure out how to game the system or cheat it to gain more rewards or karma points…which, in turn, created karma karma whores and trolls.
      
   2. Google’s page rank system is the most successful “crowdsourcing” community and seemingly more honest. Google has not made their algorithm public and the criteria seems to changes all the time.  No one really figured out a way to game Google page rank system and so no one knows how to beat their system and take an unfair advantage.

   So what are some solutions to having your crowdsourcing system gamed?

   1. Go in stages – separate the voting from the results
   2. Randomness – instead of only showing content that is highly rated, randomize it.
   3. Use Algorithms to disguise the data
   4. Have a clear purpose – Tell your users why you want them to participate in this project…communicate with people well.  Let them know in your terms of service who will own the data.  Respect the members and their work

The bottom line with crowdsourcing is “Give Good, Get Good”.  Download the full presentation

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