Todorka Alexandrova

Using stranger as sensors: temporal and geo-sensitive question answering via social media

MoboQ is a location-based real-time social question answering service deployed in the field in China. Using MoboQ, people can ask temporal and geo-sensitive questions, such as how long is the line at a popular business right now, and then receive answers that crowdsourced from other users in a timely fashion. To obtain answers for questions, the system analyzes the live stream from public microblogging service Sina Weibo to identify people who are likely to currently be at the place that is associated with a question and sends them the unsolicited question through the microblogging service from which they were identified. MoboQ was deployed in China at the beginning of 2012, until October of the same year, it was used to ask 15,224 questions by 35,214 registered users, and it gathered 29,491 answers; 74.6% of the questions received at least one answer, 28% received a first response within 10 minutes, and 51% of the questions got first answer within 20 minutes. In total, 91% of the questions successfully found at least one answer candidate, and they were sent to 162,954 microblogging service users. We analyze the usage patterns and behaviors of the real-world end-users, discuss the lessons learned, and outline the future directions and possible applications that could be built on top of MoboQ.

Drawing on mobile crowds via social media Case UbiAsk: Image based mobile social search across languages

Recent years have witnessed the impact of crowdsourcing model, social media, and pervasive computing. We believe that the more significant impact is latent in the convergence of these ideas on the mobile platform. In this paper, we introduce a mobile crowdsourcing platform that is built on top of social media. A mobile crowdsourcing application called UbiAsk is presented as one study case. UbiAsk is designed for assisting foreign visitors by involving the local crowd to answer their image-based questions at hand in a timely fashion. Existing social media platforms are used to rapidly allocate microtasks to a wide network of local residents. The resulting data are visualized using a mapping tool as well as augmented reality (AR) technology, result in a visual information pool for public use. We ran a controlled field experiment in Japan for 6 weeks with 55 participants. The results demonstrated a reliable performance on response speed and response quantity: half of the requests were answered within 10 min, 75% of requests were answered within 30 min, and on average every request had 4.2 answers. Especially in the afternoon, evening and night, nearly 88% requests were answered in average approximately 10 min, with more than 4 answers per request. In terms of participation motivation, we found the top active crowdworkers were more driven by intrinsic motivations rather than any of the extrinsic incentives (game-based incentives and social incentives) we designed.

Enhancing values through virtuality for intelligent artifacts that influence human attitude and behavior

Embodied interaction technologies allow us to enhance physical artifacts surrounding us by adding an information layer to the artifacts. The information layer that we call virtual forms presents dynamically generated visual information representing virtual objects and creatures that influence human attitude and behavior. The focus of our research is to develop intelligent artifacts enhanced with virtual forms that influence human attitude and behavior. To suggest some ways to develop such artifacts that harmoniously integrate virtual forms into them, based on our experience with three case studies presented in the paper, we propose a value-based analysis framework, which allows us to discuss and consider some good-design implications for the design of the enhanced intelligent artifacts. We also present design implications to apply the value-based analysis framework to analyze and enhance one of intelligent artifact. Finally, our experience suggests that incorporating fictionality is a promising direction for the designing of intelligent artifacts with ideological messages intended to influence people’s attitude and behavior.

A crowdsourcing based mobile image translation and knowledge sharing service

Travelers in countries that use an unfamiliar script cannot use pocket translators or online translation services to understand menus, maps, signs and other important information, because they are unable to write the text they see. Solutions based on optical character recognition provide very limited performance in real-world situations and for complex scripts such as Chinese and Japanese. In this paper, we propose an alternative image translation solution based on crowdsourcing. A large number of human workers on mobile terminals are used to carry out the tasks of image recognition, translation and quality assurance. Compared to purely technical solutions, this human computation approach is also able to account for context and non-textual cues, and provide higher level information to the end-user. In this paper, we describe a preliminary user study to create a model of end-user requirements.

Value-Based design for gamifying daily activities

Computing technologies allow us to gamify our daily activities by embedding computers in our environments. In this paper, we propose a value-based gamification framework for increasing intrinsic motivation in our daily life. We introduce five values and a conceptual framework based on these values. Then, as an example we show how the values are used in Augmented Trading Card Game during its design.

Analyzing the influence of virtuality on playful social interaction

Ambient intelligence technologies are making our daily life increasingly virtual, and the boundary between the real world and the virtual world is gradually disappearing. Computer games are often played on the Internet, which allows people to enjoy games with others, even when they are not at the same location. This paper analyzes the Trading Card Game (TCG), which has two versions. One version is played with paper-based cards, whereas the other is played on a computer. The computer-based TCG supports remote play and has a number of enhancements, such as providing special fictional effects on virtual cards. The two different versions are useful to analyze the influence of virtuality in making future social interaction more playful. First, we investigate potential pitfalls to introduce virtuality in TCG through the scenario-based analysis, which adopts a player’s personality to exploit potential difficulties. For investigating further insights on the influence of virtuality in TCG, we analyze some experiments with Augmented Trading Card Game, where a real opponent player is replaced with a fictional player. Our findings from the analyses show that the feeling of realness is essential to make incorporated virtuality successful. Recently some games’ concepts can be adopted in order to augment our real world. It is essential to investigate the influence of virtuality introduced with the games. The future social interaction will incorporate virtuality based on a variety of game-like features to make the interaction more playful. Therefore, the insights described in this paper will be useful to help the design of future playful social interaction.

Achieving sustainable society through micro-level crowdfunding

This paper proposes a new approach for motivating people to participate in achieving a sustainable society. The method is called Micro-Crowdfunding, and encourages people living in urban cities to support and contribute to the sustainability of small common resources, such as public sinks, toilets, shelves, office areas and so on. Micro-Crowdfunding is based on the crowdfunding concept and uses the local currency idea, as tools of the social mechanism, to increase peoples awareness of how they participate in keeping the sustainability of common resources. Our approach aims to maintain the sustainability of common resources with peoples small efforts. In this approach, an organizer introduces a new mission for keeping the sustainability of a resource, and investors fund it. Finally, a performer executes the mission, and completes it with minimal efforts achieving the resources sustainability.

Family interaction for responsible natural resource consumption

In this paper we propose a novel approach to persuasive technology, based on children-parent interaction, to be implemented in a smart pad ludic application; to contribute to the natural resource consumption problem, not only by raising awareness, but by encouraging informed decisions on their use. We conducted a survey to see which natural resources are more relevant to Japanese society. We designed an attractive multimedia tool, considering the family interaction, that uses eco-visualizations, a narrative and cartoon characters. If successful, we would achieve better informed consumption of food and other natural resources, reinforcing positive attitudes within the family.

Mobile Image Search via Local Crowd: A User Study

In this paper we present a on-field study for evaluating a crowd sourcing mobile social search application. With the help of the local crowd via social medias, this application assists foreign visitors in Japan by answering their image-based questions at hand in a timely fashion. We ran a controlled field experiment for 6 weeks with 55 participants. We found that the mobile crowd sourcing model demonstrated a reliable performance on response speed and response quantity: half of the requests were answered within 10 minutes, 75% of requests were answered within 30 minutes, and on average every request had 4.2 answers. Especially in the afternoon, evening and night, nearly 88% requests were answered in average approximately 10 minutes, with more than 4 answers per request. In terms of participation motivation, we found the top active crowd workers were more driven by intrinsic motivations rather than any of the extrinsic incentives (gamification incentives and social incentives) we designed.

One Size Does Not Fit All: Applying the Right Game Concepts for the Right Persons to Encourage Non-game Activities

In this paper, we present some insights extracted from experiences with conducting three case studies that show how different game-based approaches affect people’s motivation to encourage more activities in digital services. The first case study is a game-based English words learning application. The second case study is a gamified sharing economy service. The third case study is a persuasive service customized for a user’s unique preference. The results of the case studies show that adopting only one approach is not effective to motivate all diverse people, and multiple approaches should be incorporated when developing digital services that motivate diverse users by game-based approaches.