Pulacloud: Using Human Computation to Enable Development at the Bottom of the Economic Ladder

This research aims to explore how Human Computation can be used to aid economic development in communities experiencing extreme poverty throughout the world. Work is ongoing with a community in rural Kenya to connect them to employment opportunities through a Human Computation system. A feasibility study has been conducted in the community using the 3D protein folding game Foldit and Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk. Feasibility has been confirmed and obstacles identified. Current work includes a pilot study doing image analysis for two research projects and developing a GUI that is usable by workers with little computer literacy. Future work includes developing effective incentive systems that operate both at the individual level and the group level and integrating worker accuracy evaluation, worker compensation, and result-credibility evaluation