Towards Supportive Mechanisms for Crowd Collaboration – Design Guidelines for Platform Developers

Abstract

Crowd work can be distinguished from crowdsourcing mainly with regard to the monetary remuneration of crowd workers for tasks similar to an employment. The crowd work platform delivers the environment and tool to connect crowdsourcer and crowd worker in order to orchestrate the collaboration between them as well as generally among individuals of the crowd. Increasing collaboration on platforms presupposes a design that involves actors and functionalities that support the collaboration beyond the individual. We conduct a systematic literature review with the main focus on incentive systems, management approaches for collaborative crowd work process and control as well as guidance of the crowd activities towards specific directions. We consolidate recommendations from prior studies for designers and providers of crowd work platforms by introducing design principles, to be considered for informed design decisions. We contribute an integrated overview of functionalities and mechanisms explored in crowd work literature so far to advance the understanding and design of crowd work processes.