Designing effective user interfaces for crowdsourcing: an exploratory study

We investigate characteristics of the technology platform for different types of crowdsourcing initatives, as characterized by their task type--specifically we classify crowdsourcing applications by task structure, task interdependence, and task commitment. The method employed is to examine best practices of well-known crowdsourcing applications, investigating their user interface features, and characteristics that make them successful examples of crowdsourcing. Among the best practices uncovered were the following: easy searching for information; adaptive user interfaces that learned from the crowd; easy-to-use mobile interfaces; the ability to vote ideas up or down; credentialing; and creating sticky user interfaces that engaged the user. Finally, we consider issues for further study and investigation.