Maria Gilda P. Esteves

CSCWD: Five characters in search of crowds

According to some researchers, the wave of crowds we are witnessing in recent years is another example of the challenges for the CSCW community, a line of research that fights against the dilemma of fragmentation. The reflexes of this phenomena in projects of different branches have caused a change of paradigm in how products and services are idealized and how the projects are conducted in a collaborative way. Successful examples have attracted the attention of entrepreneurs in various areas and increased the business vocabulary with terms like crowd wisdom, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and open innovation. It is a different reality from the one we are used to in the context of groupware systems, and it brings new challenges that leave some relevant open research questions. This paper proposes a characterization of crowd computing systems, contextualizing the design activity within this domain, presents a research agenda in the context of CSCW and discusses possible implications of the mass phenomena on the line of action of the community of Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design.

Qualitocracy: A data quality collaborative framework applied to citizen science

Citizen science projects generally use the Web platform to promote scientific research and recruit volunteers to assist them. Through a crowdsourcing platform, a large amount of data is submitted and some factors may lead the scientific community to doubt the seriousness of some projects. This may be due to the unreliability of data collected on a voluntary basis and the absence of criteria for quality control of the submitted data. Our main research goal is to propose a collaborative framework for improving data quality. By associating data quality dimensions to scientists through a voting network, we aim to create a continuous process for data quality validation.

A meta-model for crowdsourcing platforms in Data Collection and Participatory Sensing

Crowdsourcing is both a new paradigm of collaboration and a new frontier for CSCWD. Since its introduction in 2006, the notion of Crowdsourcing has been the object of a number of studies. Crowdsourcing has a multidisciplinary nature with a huge diversity of applications that encompasses many practices. The concepts that shape crowdsourcing are still under construction and it is difficult to reach a consensus. Based on this scenario, this paper proposes a meta-model which aims to fit generic solutions related to a specific subset of crowdsourcing designed to accomplish a specific task: Data Collection and Participatory Sensing to leverage the engagement of volunteers with Science and Environmental issues.

Mix4Crowds - Toward a framework to design crowd collaboration with science

Citizen Science projects are characterized by mass collaboration of ordinary citizens with scientific research. The advent of new crowdware technologies and the ease of access made possible by the Internet are reshaping the way people and scientific organizations work together. However, the particular nature of this form of collaboration requires a tailored approach that increases the chances of all involved parties meet their expectations and achieve their goals. We propose a conceptual framework to help Citizen Science enterprises in conceiving their crowdsourcing strategy and designing their collaboration systems. It departs from basic principles of traditional marketing models and incorporates the specific requirements of this increasingly popular but also complex form of web-based collaborative work.

How the crowd can change collaborative work in patient care

The medical paradigm is leaving the traditional doctor-patient relationship, i.e., the physician-centred model and evolving towards a new de-centralized model where patients are given more responsibility for their health. This article seeks to understand what is changing in this relationship and what role the Web and the interconnected crowds of people play in this state of affairs. Our work discusses the evolution of the Web, how it is changing Medicine and the way patients are reaching to health information, and presents a new approach for Medicine 3.0 and its prospective scenarios. This transition has been changing the interaction between doctors and patients. Patients have become more social and responsible for their own health, adopting new communication channels and interacting with other patients and stakeholders distributed all over the world. In this new health care context, the premise whereby many people are eager to contribute by sharing health information, anytime and anywhere, should be included in the design of new technologies to support collaborative work in healthcare. To assist in this, our paper discusses how the new crowdware systems is supporting a multitude of Web-based collaborators interested in Medical Care, showing some examples of its application, taking into account all the stakeholders: doctors, patients, laboratories, hospitals, and apomediators.

Fuzzy prospective scenarios in strategic planning in Large-Group Decision

This work presents and discusses an approach in the MUTIRÕ project, showing the possibilities created in an experiment using fuzzy scenarios instead of traditional crispy ones. The Olympic and Paralympics Games that will be hosted in Rio de Janeiro in mid-2016 served as a confirmation of these concepts. A strategic planning process in Semantic Crowdware Large Group Decision demands several premises that should be taken into account and is discussed in this work. The preparation plans for the Rio 2016 event should be carefully prepared and depend mostly on the ideas generated by specialists. However, this is not feasible, as most of the problems addressed in this kind of event are unique and should be a mix of old experiences and new ideas. The premise that many people are eager to contribute by sending new ideas and collaborating is not true and new approaches should be tried. Although many of the steps in the process will be discussed, this paper will concentrate on the definition of the Prospective Scenarios considered as the most appropriate for the use of the Large Group concepts. To assist in this task, our paper intends to show a strategic planning method adapted to use a large number of collaborators interested in the success of Rio 2016, taking into account their socioeconomic and geographical aspects.

A checklist for peer knowledge validation in project-based organizations

Sharing knowledge across projects is a necessary challenge to ensure the competitive advantage of organizations. With temporary structures, multiple roles, multiple activities, and limited time, the project-based organization needs to retain the knowledge gained in a project and share it with others. “Lessons learned” processes are implemented in order to systematize the transfer of this knowledge, with the main challenge being the mobilization of people to record their experiences in a database. The stored knowledge, however, needs to be validated before being shared and appropriately classified in one of the three main categories: Best Practices, Lessons Learned, and Points for Attention. This study shows the benefits of a checklist / action plan for ensuring the effectiveness of the validation stage, since failures during this stage may jeopardize the initial effort to mobilize project teams to record their experiences and learning.

A crowdsourcing approach to the design of Virtual Research Environments

A Species List of Flora is a working list of scientific descriptions of all known plants occurring within a given region. It represents an inventory in process, i.e., updates and new plant species are added every working day. The Flora checklist has an important value for the scientific community, government, industry and society, since it gathers accurate data on flora diversity. Knowing the Brazilian flora has been a commitment assumed by Brazil towards the international community. In 2009, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, in a joint action with several research institutions, started the development of a Virtual Research Environment based on crowdsourcing. The aim of the project was to support the collaborative and distributed work of an undefined number of pre-qualified trained taxonomists, grouped in their specialties. This article describes the technological aspects related to the ongoing work on the List of Species of the Brazilian Flora, which is a recent example of success in building a knowledge database collaboratively. It describes the mechanisms used for determining individual characteristics of potential participants (target audience), the means of collaboration and communication, as well as the technological platform developed to support a web-based crowdsourcing design for Virtual Research Environment. Some information on both the performance of the team of about 600 researchers and the quality of information produced are presented, also including some of the lessons learned and recommendations for future action.