Crowdsourcing For Dummies by David Alan Grier

Author:David Alan Grier
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Instructing the Crowd

In This Chapter

Writing a clear statement of work

Putting together easy-to-follow instructions

Taking feedback on board

When it comes to management and communication, crowdsourcing requires a careful and thorough approach. Unlike on the traditional shop floor or in an office complex, all your interaction with the crowd passes through information technology, and the process strips away lots of useful knowledge. You can’t stop at someone’s desk to see how she’s doing or observe a work team making its plans. You have to gather all your information and give all your direction through technological means.

Crowds may be intelligent, but they don’t always have a direction. And when they do have a direction, they may not be going down the right path for you. Crowdsourcing isn’t magical. You can’t simply make some vague statement of a goal and expect the crowd to find an elegant and useful solution. From time to time, someone makes a brief communication to a crowd and wonderful things happen. Such events, however, are rare.

So to guide the crowd well, you need to master the skill of communicating with words, of using structure to direct activity, and of supplementing instructions with graphs and pictures. Communication works both ways, and you’ve also got to get good at hunting down information to see how the crowd is working, how it’s engaging with your task, and how you may need to adjust your plans. This chapter gives you a good grounding in managing and communicating with the crowd so you get the best possible results.

Preparing the Fundamental Message: Writing a Statement of Work

The first communication that you generally have with the crowd is the statement of work, in which you tell the crowd what you intend to do and how you’ll to involve it. The statement explains the goal and is the rallying point for the crowd.

The statement takes different forms in each version of crowdsourcing, as shown in Table 11-1. For more details on running each kind of crowdsourcing project, visit the chapter indicated in the Type column.

Table 11-1 Statements of Work in Different Types of Crowdsourcing

Type

Name of Statement

Explains

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