Question-Answer Cards for an Inclusive Micro-tasking Framework for the Elderly

Abstract

Abstract. Micro-tasking (e.g., crowdsourcing) has the potential to help "longtail" senior workers utilize their knowledge and experience to contribute to their communities. However, their limited ICT skills and their concerns about new technologies can prevent them from participating in emerging work scenarios. We have devised a question-answer card interface to allow the elderly to participate in micro-tasks with minimal ICT skills and learning efforts. Our survey identified a need for skill-based task recommendations, so we also added a probabilistic skill assessment model based on the results of the micro-tasks. We also discuss some scenarios to exploit the question-answer card framework to create new work opportunities for senior citizens. Our experiments showed that untrained seniors performed the micro-tasks effectively with our interface in both controlled and realistic conditions, and the differences in their skills were reliably assessed.

Motivating Multi-Generational Crowd Workers in Social-Purpose Work

“…The age had significant effects on the effectiveness of the Q&A forum (p < .005) and on-screen manuals (p < .001). These results confirm the previous findings that senior citizens tend to prefer manuals and inperson instructions [16] [19].…”

“…Instead, it is segmented for each book (Task Identity). Also, it was reported that the questionanswer interaction is enjoyable even for senior workers [16] (Fun). The workers may develop their technical, linguistic, or editorial skills through proofreading (Human Capital Advancement).…”

“…It is known that senior citizens prefer to have explicit instructions rather than using trial-and-error approaches for new information technologies [16] [19]. We considered this fact since we wanted to involve senior workers, who had limited participation in earlier crowdsourcing projects.…”

“…Alam and Campbell [1] described several types of worker motivation in digitalizing historical newspapers, but they did not test the quantitative effects of each type of motivation. Some studies suggested that senior crowd workers could be more dedicated than younger workers [16] [26], but there is little known about the actual effects of the differences among generations.…”

Evaluating the accessibility of crowdsourcing tasks on Amazon's mechanical turk

“…Khanna et al [6] evaluated the usability of MTurk for workers with low technology literacy, and found that HITs often featured complex and confusing interfaces. Kobayashi et al [7] analyzed the usability of crowd work tasks for older adults, and found that crowd work sites could be especially confusing for older adults.…”