Gianni Haoyu Xie

I am a graduating PhD student in the Information School at the University of Sheffield. My past and ongoing research includes the impact of using HIT catchers on the crowdsourcing platform, worker strategies of using HIT catchers, payment transparency issue on crowdsourcing platforms, factors influencing crowdworkers' knowledge sharing behaviours, and gamification of education using interactive story games.

PhD project

Workers on crowdsourcing platforms suffer from low working conditions, including low hourly income, difficulty communicating with job requesters and work stress due to lack of social belonging. Research has revealed the great potential for worker collaboration to enhance overall effectiveness and engage them more into the crowd work. This study aims to explore how crowd workers could collaborate and improve their working conditions with the proposed Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) system.

This system attempts to restructure independent microtask workflow into team workflow that assigns each member with a specific role to improve crowd working conditions. The ways of collaboration include team matching based on similar preferences, team communication with requesters, peer training and peer management.

Following the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM), the system architecture will be designed and implemented following the reflections about interdependencies and sensemaking theories. It will then be optimised through a Delphi study. Finally, controlled experiments will be conducted, and the data will be analysed with mixed methods to evaluate its influence on crowd working conditions.

Supervisors

• Dr Suvodeep Mazumdar
• Dr Efpraxia Zamani