Boris Smus | Carnegie Mellon University (original) (raw)

Papers by Boris Smus

… of the 2011 annual conference extended …, Jan 1, 2011

Micro-task markets such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk represent a new paradigm for accomplishing wo... more Micro-task markets such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk represent a new paradigm for accomplishing work, in which employers can tap into a large population of workers around the globe to accomplish tasks in a fraction of the time and money of more traditional methods. However, such markets typically support only simple, independent tasks, such as labeling an image or judging the relevance of a search result. Here we present a general purpose framework for accomplishing complex tasks using micro-task markets. Our approach is inspired by the MapReduce framework for distributed processing and provides a scaffolding for complex human computation tasks. We describe our general framework, a web-based prototype, and case studies on article writing and decision making that demonstrate the benefits of the approach.

Proceedings of the 28th of the international …, Jan 1, 2010

Introduction Love of rhythm is universal. People everywhere can often be seen tapping their knees... more Introduction Love of rhythm is universal. People everywhere can often be seen tapping their knees and feet to the music in their ears and in their heads. Unfortunately, traditional rock drums are loud, large, expensive and difficult to transport. As a result, very few rhythm lovers ...

Crowdsourced labor markets represent a powerful new paradigm for accomplishing work. Understandin... more Crowdsourced labor markets represent a powerful new paradigm for accomplishing work. Understanding the motivating factors that lead to high quality work could have significant benefits. However, researchers have so far found that motivating factors such as increased monetary reward generally increase workers' willingness to accept a task or the speed at which a task is completed, but do not improve the quality of the work. We hypothesize that factors that increase the intrinsic motivation of a tasksuch as framing a task as helping othersmay succeed in improving output quality where extrinsic motivators such as increased pay do not. In this paper we present an experiment testing this hypothesis along with a novel experimental design that enables controlled experimentation with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a popular crowdsourcing task market. Results suggest that intrinsic motivation can indeed improve the quality of workers' output, confirming our hypothesis. Furthermore, we find a synergistic interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that runs contrary to previous literature suggesting "crowding out" effects. Our results have significant practical and theoretical implications for crowd work.

reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu

Proceedings of the 12th ACM international …, Jan 1, 2010

This paper presents Running Gestures, an interaction technique that relies on foot gestures while... more This paper presents Running Gestures, an interaction technique that relies on foot gestures while running. A prototype and evaluation of one of the proposed gestures, a mid-stride skip, is presented in detail. The developed prototype is used by runners to change the currently playing music track, and the evaluation compares users' performance in relation to other methods of changing tracks while running. The results show that Running Gestures is a highly effective way of interacting with a system when running.

… of the 2011 annual conference extended …, Jan 1, 2011

Micro-task markets such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk represent a new paradigm for accomplishing wo... more Micro-task markets such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk represent a new paradigm for accomplishing work, in which employers can tap into a large population of workers around the globe to accomplish tasks in a fraction of the time and money of more traditional methods. However, such markets typically support only simple, independent tasks, such as labeling an image or judging the relevance of a search result. Here we present a general purpose framework for accomplishing complex tasks using micro-task markets. Our approach is inspired by the MapReduce framework for distributed processing and provides a scaffolding for complex human computation tasks. We describe our general framework, a web-based prototype, and case studies on article writing and decision making that demonstrate the benefits of the approach.

Proceedings of the 28th of the international …, Jan 1, 2010

Introduction Love of rhythm is universal. People everywhere can often be seen tapping their knees... more Introduction Love of rhythm is universal. People everywhere can often be seen tapping their knees and feet to the music in their ears and in their heads. Unfortunately, traditional rock drums are loud, large, expensive and difficult to transport. As a result, very few rhythm lovers ...

Crowdsourced labor markets represent a powerful new paradigm for accomplishing work. Understandin... more Crowdsourced labor markets represent a powerful new paradigm for accomplishing work. Understanding the motivating factors that lead to high quality work could have significant benefits. However, researchers have so far found that motivating factors such as increased monetary reward generally increase workers' willingness to accept a task or the speed at which a task is completed, but do not improve the quality of the work. We hypothesize that factors that increase the intrinsic motivation of a tasksuch as framing a task as helping othersmay succeed in improving output quality where extrinsic motivators such as increased pay do not. In this paper we present an experiment testing this hypothesis along with a novel experimental design that enables controlled experimentation with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in Amazon's Mechanical Turk, a popular crowdsourcing task market. Results suggest that intrinsic motivation can indeed improve the quality of workers' output, confirming our hypothesis. Furthermore, we find a synergistic interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that runs contrary to previous literature suggesting "crowding out" effects. Our results have significant practical and theoretical implications for crowd work.

reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu

Proceedings of the 12th ACM international …, Jan 1, 2010

This paper presents Running Gestures, an interaction technique that relies on foot gestures while... more This paper presents Running Gestures, an interaction technique that relies on foot gestures while running. A prototype and evaluation of one of the proposed gestures, a mid-stride skip, is presented in detail. The developed prototype is used by runners to change the currently playing music track, and the evaluation compares users' performance in relation to other methods of changing tracks while running. The results show that Running Gestures is a highly effective way of interacting with a system when running.