Competing or aiming to be average?: Normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers

Engagement, motivation and active contribution by digital volunteers are key requirements for crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Many systems use competitive elements, for example point scoring and leaderboards, to achieve these ends. However, while competition may motivate some people, it can have a neutral or demotivating effect on others. In this paper we explore theories of personal and social norms and investigate normification as an alternative approach to engagement, to be used alongside or instead of competitive strategies. We provide a systematic review of existing crowdsourcing and citizen science literature and categorise the ways that theories of norms have been incorporated to date. We then present qualitative interview data from a pro-environmental crowdsourcing study, Close the Door, which reveals normalising attitudes in certain participants. We assess how this links with competitive behaviour and participant performance. Based on our findings and analysis of norm theories, we consider the implications for designers wishing to use normification as an engagement strategy in crowdsourcing and citizen science systems

Amplifying Quiet Voices: Challenges and Opportunities for Participatory Design at an Urban Scale

Many Smart City projects are beginning to consider the role of citizens. However, current methods for engaging urban populations in participatory design activities are somewhat limited. In this paper, we describe an approach taken to empower socially disadvantaged citizens, using a variety of both social and technological tools, in a smart city project. Through analysing the nature of citizens’ concerns and proposed solutions, we explore the benefits of our approach, arguing that engaging citizens can uncover hyper-local concerns that provide a foundation for finding solutions to address citizen concerns. By reflecting on our approach, we identify four key challenges to utilising participatory design at an urban scale; balancing scale with the personal, who has control of the process, who is participating and integrating citizen-led work with local authorities. By addressing these challenges, we will be able to truly engage citizens as collaborators in co-designing their city

Structures for Knowledge Co-creation Between Organisations and the Public

A definitive version of this conference paper is available in the ACM Digital Library http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556420.2558854© ACM 2014Social computing technologies are emerging to support innovative new relationships between organisations and the public. Inspired by concepts such as collective intelligence and crowdsourcing, diverse organisations are exploring new ways to increase engagement with the public, collect localised knowledge, or leverage human cognition and creativity. The COP2014 workshop will assimilate the craft understanding and experimentation underpinning innovations in relationships between public and professional realms. We aim to provide an opportunity for discussion and to build understanding of the principles of making these sociotechnical systems work, and discuss possible designs and opportunities that may be valuable and remain underexplored. As a tangible outcome, our main goal will be to co-author a paper discussing our positions on current systems and future visions, for submission to Communications of the ACM. We welcome participation from interested organisations, alongside those conducting research in this area. Topics of interest include: How can systems be designed for participation that is beneficial to individuals and organisations? How do we draw boundaries between ‘official’ and externally-generated knowledge? How can professional activities connect with the just-in-time, emergent nature of amateur interactions?RCUK Horizon Hu

Theoretical Underpinnings and Practical Challenges of Crowdsourcing as a Mechanism for Academic Study

Researchers in a variety of fields are increasingly adopting crowdsourcing as a reliable instrument for performing tasks that are either complex for humans and computer algorithms. As a result, new forms of collective intelligence have emerged from the study of massive crowd-machine interactions in scientific work settings as a field for which there is no known theory or model able to explain how it really works. Such type of crowd work uses an open participation model that keeps the scientific activity (including datasets, methods, guidelines, and analysis results) widely available and mostly independent from institutions, which distinguishes crowd science from other crowd-assisted types of participation. In this paper, we build on the practical challenges of crowd-AI supported research and propose a conceptual framework for addressing the socio-technical aspects of crowd science from a CSCW viewpoint. Our study reinforces a manifested lack of systematic and empirical research of the symbiotic relation of AI with human computation and crowd computing in scientific endeavors

Human-agent collectives

We live in a world where a host of computer systems, distributed throughout our physical and information environments, are increasingly implicated in our everyday actions. Computer technologies impact all aspects of our lives and our relationship with the digital has fundamentally altered as computers have moved out of the workplace and away from the desktop. Networked computers, tablets, phones and personal devices are now commonplace, as are an increasingly diverse set of digital devices built into the world around us. Data and information is generated at unprecedented speeds and volumes from an increasingly diverse range of sources. It is then combined in unforeseen ways, limited only by human imagination. People’s activities and collaborations are becoming ever more dependent upon and intertwined with this ubiquitous information substrate. As these trends continue apace, it is becoming apparent that many endeavours involve the symbiotic interleaving of humans and computers. Moreover, the emergence of these close-knit partnerships is inducing profound change. Rather than issuing instructions to passive machines that wait until they are asked before doing anything, we will work in tandem with highly inter-connected computational components that act autonomously and intelligently (aka agents). As a consequence, greater attention needs to be given to the balance of control between people and machines. In many situations, humans will be in charge and agents will predominantly act in a supporting role. In other cases, however, the agents will be in control and humans will play the supporting role. We term this emerging class of systems human-agent collectives (HACs) to reflect the close partnership and the flexible social interactions between the humans and the computers. As well as exhibiting increased autonomy, such systems will be inherently open and social. This means the participants will need to continually and flexibly establish and manage a range of social relationships. Thus, depending on the task at hand, different constellations of people, resources, and information will need to come together, operate in a coordinated fashion, and then disband. The openness and presence of many distinct stakeholders means participation will be motivated by a broad range of incentives rather than diktat. This article outlines the key research challenges involved in developing a comprehensive understanding of HACs. To illuminate this agenda, a nascent application in the domain of disaster response is presented

Tensions and paradoxes in electronic patient record research: a systematic literature review using the meta-narrative method

Background: The extensive and rapidly expanding research literature on electronic patient records (EPRs) presents challenges to systematic reviewers. This literature is heterogeneous and at times conflicting, not least because it covers multiple research traditions with different underlying philosophical assumptions and methodological approaches. Aim: To map, interpret and critique the range of concepts, theories, methods and empirical findings on EPRs, with a particular emphasis on the implementation and use of EPR systems. Method: Using the meta-narrative method of systematic review, and applying search strategies that took us beyond the Medline-indexed literature, we identified over 500 full-text sources. We used ‘conflicting’ findings to address higher-order questions about how the EPR and its implementation were differently conceptualised and studied by different communities of researchers. Main findings: Our final synthesis included 24 previous systematic reviews and 94 additional primary studies, most of the latter from outside the biomedical literature. A number of tensions were evident, particularly in relation to: [1] the EPR (‘container’ or ‘itinerary’); [2] the EPR user (‘information-processer’ or ‘member of socio-technical network’); [3] organizational context (‘the setting within which the EPR is implemented’ or ‘the EPR-in-use’); [4] clinical work (‘decision-making’ or ‘situated practice’); [5] the process of change (‘the logic of determinism’ or ‘the logic of opposition’); [6] implementation success (‘objectively defined’ or ‘socially negotiated’); and [7] complexity and scale (‘the bigger the better’ or ‘small is beautiful’). Findings suggest that integration of EPRs will always require human work to re-contextualize knowledge for different uses; that whilst secondary work (audit, research, billing) may be made more efficient by the EPR, primary clinical work may be made less efficient; that paper, far from being technologically obsolete, currently offers greater ecological flexibility than most forms of electronic record; and that smaller systems may sometimes be more efficient and effective than larger ones. Conclusions: The tensions and paradoxes revealed in this study extend and challenge previous reviews and suggest that the evidence base for some EPR programs is more limited than is often assumed. We offer this paper as a preliminary contribution to a much-needed debate on this evidence and its implications, and suggest avenues for new research

Towards Citizen Forensics: Improving Citizen-Police Collaboration

Pervasive digital technologies are increasingly used to record different aspects of citizens’ lives, from activity and location tracking, to social interactions and video recordings of life experiences. However, effective use of these technologies to strengthen collaborations between citizens and police requires a fresh examination of the creation and use of evidence. We extend the concept of Citizen Forensics to denote this new model of citizen-police collaboration. By drawing on the literature on citizen science and community policing, we identify the challenges that must be addressed to meet the important societal need of improving citizen-police collaborations