PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction — The Perpetual Work Life of Crowdworkers: How Tooling Practices Increase Fragmentation in CrowdworkExport this event to calendar

Thursday, January 9, 2020 12:00 PM EST

Alex Williams, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Crowdworkers regularly support their work with scripts, extensions, and software to enhance their productivity. Despite their evident significance, little is understood regarding how these tools affect crowdworkers’ quality of life and work. 

In this study, we report findings from an interview study (N=21) aimed at exploring the tooling practices used by full-time crowdworkers on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our interview data suggests that the tooling utilized by crowdworkers (1) strongly contributes to the fragmentation of microwork by enabling task switching and multitasking behavior; (2) promotes the fragmentation of crowdworkers’ work-life boundaries by relying on tooling that encourages a ‘work-anywhere’ attitude; and (3) aids the fragmentation of social ties within worker communities through limited tooling access. Our findings have implications for building systems that unify crowdworkers’ work practice in support of their productivity and well-being.

Location 
DC - William G. Davis Computer Research Centre
2314
200 University Avenue West

Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1
Canada

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