WMSC '16: Beyond the Desktop—The Rise of Mobile and Situated Crowdsourcing

TL;DR

The WMSC '16 workshop addresses a critical shift in how we distribute computationally challenging tasks. By moving away from centralized online platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and toward Mobile and Situated Crowdsourcing, researchers can leverage the physical context of users. Using smartphones and public displays, this approach taps into "hyper-local" knowledge and real-world sensors that traditional platforms simply cannot access.

Problem: The Limits of the Digital Crowd

While online crowdsourcing is efficient for general tasks, it has a significant "blind spot": Physical Context.

• Geographic Limitations: It is difficult to find a worker on an online platform who is currently standing in a specific restaurant in Oulu, Finland, to report on queue lengths.
• Demographic Bias: Online platforms often fail to represent users in developing regions or those who do not spend their day in front of a PC.
• Incentive Decay: Financial rewards are the primary motivator online, often leading to "bot-like" behavior or low-quality contributions.

Methodology: High-Context Crowdsourcing

The workshop organizers propose a dual-track solution to these pain points:

1. Mobile Crowdsourcing (The "Anywhere" Crowd)

By utilizing the sensors already in our pockets (GPS, Accelerometers, Cameras), mobile crowdsourcing allows for tasks that are inherently tied to movement and location. Examples include real-time traffic updates (Waze) or environmental sensing.

2. Situated Crowdsourcing (The "Right There" Crowd)

This is the more "novel" frontier. It involves placing task interfaces in the physical environment.

• Public Displays: Interactive screens in city centers that ask for public opinion or local tagging.
• Physical Kiosks: Devices like "Umati" (a vending machine) that trade snacks for small bits of cognitive work.

Note: The workshop organizers represent a global collaboration across Finland, USA, Japan, and South Korea, highlighting the universal applicability of these methods.

Key Insights and Experimental Results

The organizers cite several breakthrough studies that prove the viability of this model:

• Quality Parity: Research shows that situated crowdsourcing markets can attract a populous workforce with contribution quality that matches or exceeds online counterparts.
• Emotional Mapping: One study used projective testing on public displays to successfully map the "diurnal rhythms of emotion" within a community—something nearly impossible to verify through a standard web survey.
• Social Impact: In developing regions, mobile crowdsourcing (e.g., mClerk) acts as a bridge, providing computer access and income to populations without PC infrastructure.

Depth Analysis: Why Does This Work?

The effectiveness of situated crowdsourcing relies on Psychological Empowerment and Altruism. When a task is "situated" in a user's current environment (e.g., asking about the queue while they are in it), the "cognitive load" of understanding the context is zero. The user is already an expert in their current 1-meter radius. By tapping into this immediate expertise, the "WMSC" approach reduces the friction of participation.

Conclusion & Future Outlook

WMSC '16 isn't just a workshop; it's a manifesto for Context-Aware Computing.

• Takeaway: The future of crowdsourcing isn't global and anonymous; it's local and situated.
• Limitations: Deployment costs for physical hardware (screens/kiosks) remain higher than launching a website.
• Future Work: We expect to see more integration of AR (Augmented Reality) where the "situated" task is overlaid directly onto the physical world via a smartphone lens.

As the field moves toward Smart Cities, the lessons from WMSC '16 regarding worker behavior and quality control in the physical world will be the foundation for the next generation of urban interfaces.