Crowdsourcing in Interface Design- Evolution, Impact, and Future Prospects

Crowdsourcing in Interface Design- Evolution, Impact, and Future Prospects

Introduction

The aggressive technological advances have significantly contributed to new ways of doing things such as crowdsourcing in the field of interface design. Crowdsourcing in the field of interface design has made it practically possible to spread tasks to a group of people that would otherwise be done by specific individuals. This milestone is mainly accomplished through phone calls and can be analyzed from various elements, including its invention and growth. Crowdsourcing has several impacts in the field of interface design and is further compounded with benefits and challenges in equal measures. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a solution for generating interest in design projects and a mechanism for evaluating the quality of codes submitted by anonymous users. Crowdsourcing affects the timelines and budget of a design project and has several implications on societal, legal, and ethical issues. Evaluating the practice from these dimensions will go a long way in attaining the course learning outcomes.

Invention and Growth of Crowdsourcing in the Field Interface Design

Tomasello and Schweitzer (2019) explain that the concept of crowdsourcing was in existence way before the 21st Century as the British government used it in 1714 to solicit paid ideas on anyone who would calculate the longitude of the sea. The idea was propelled through the 19^th Century during the birth of the English dictionary and later to the 20^th Century when it was applied in various projects. Crowdsourcing later gained momentum and became more relevant in the wake of the digital era. It is now a common trend that blends with all functionalities of an organization, especially in interface design. Scholars suggest that the “crowd” has untapped intelligence that can potentially solve daily challenges.

The age of Web 2.0 made crowdsourcing a key trend, and several attempts were implemented to present the idea in a digital form. As a result, Rick Gates, an internet pioneer, proposed the design of an open online encyclopedia. This led to the invention of a project branded as Interpedia in 1993, but it never succeeded and became a fun project. Further advancements were made in 2000 when Nupedia was founded, marking a remarkable milestone in the digital world. This invention paved the way for more advanced implementations, including Wikipedia, later launched in 2001.  These milestones made it possible for people worldwide to chip in and pool a wide range of knowledge rather than hiring individual writers and editors.

Organizations have gradually acknowledged the role of effective Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) over time. Clients are easily swayed by the Graphical User Interface (GUI) nature, making each enterprise offer the best platforms. For this reason, essential inventions such as Freelancer.com and MicroVentures have been established to cater to needs related to interface design (Ghezzi et al., 2018). Clients who wish to create or improve their interfaces post their requirements and attract multiple bids. However, only one of the most convincing specialists is chosen in the long run. This accomplishment is a critical achievement in interface design and is expected to grow exponentially.

Crowdsourcing is currently branched into several types, including open innovation and ideas, micro working, crowdfunding, and collective knowledge. It is now convenient to acquire collective intelligence to complete design tasks that a company would otherwise perform by itself or obtain an in-house party. It is a great relief to small businesses as they can meet their interface design needs within their constrained budgets. Unlike outsourcing, which focuses on specific groups, crowdsourcing targets an undefined population; hence, it is preferred. It has made designing more diverse, accessible, and democratized with fair opportunities to designers.

Impact of Crowdsourcing on the Field of Interface Design

Crowdsourcing is of great relevance to the in interface design for websites and web-based applications. It is now a viable alternative to the traditional model of hiring graphic designers from the localities. The preceding process would be tedious, whereby a client would post an ad in the newspaper or the mainstream media to recruit potential designers. The experts would then apply for the offer and undergo screening, shortlisting, and interviews. The most convincing specialists would then be contacted and hired upon entering mutual agreements and legal formalities. This process was inconvenient, costly, time-consuming, and would worsen when terms and conditions were conflicting. In most cases, the clients were limited in that they could not access designers in different geographical locations implying that potential talents were locked out. However, crowdsourcing has subdued these barriers by making the acquisition of interface designers more realistic.

Crowdsourcing design sites such as Behance and Dribbler have further impacted interface design as they undertake their business by either contest design or designer hiring (Bhatti, Gao & Chen, 2020). They provide companies and agencies with a platform to sign up their most preferred experts. The design contest works by allowing the client to present the characteristics of their desired website via a standard form. The submission is then used to develop a design contest, and the client is expected to incur an upfront fee. The designers access the interface requirements, and each party presents a design from which the client selects the best suit. In the other mode of hiring a specific designer, a customer peruses through the experts’ profiles, looking for the one who meets the stipulated qualifications. A standardized form is then used to contact the expert from where negotiations are done, and the project is finally delivered. The two approaches of interface design revolutionize the way of doing things to a great extent.

Companies have applauded crowdsourcing as it comes with a significant degree of freedom. Customers are no longer restricted to a single designer and can now select from a wide array of options. This approach creates value for money since one goes for the most suitable alternative. In addition, crowdsourcing has consequently led to more creative designs since the specialists merge into one platform. They interact with their peer’s submissions and get inspired in the long run. Each party strives to gain a competitive edge as a strategic way of remaining afloat in the market. This competition turns out to be a benefit to the client’s side as they get more improved design versions. The greater diversity of thinking has resulted in more attractive and interactive interfaces applicable to businesses. The created network promotes interaction amongst the designers where they get the best ideas to handle a situation. It has also become faster to solve complex challenges in the field of project design. Indeed, the invention of crowdsourcing has greatly impacted interface design.

Benefits of Incorporating Crowdsourcing in a Design Project

There are numerous benefits related to crowdsourcing, especially in the context of a design project. First, it is cost-effective now that a company does not have to spend money hiring a full-time in-house designer (Pollok, Lüttgens & Piller, 2019). A company can always get work done at cheaper rates as it eliminates worker acquisition on a contractual basis. Contracts seem expensive since most are done without an evident benchmark, which might lead to high quotes. An organization could have little knowledge of how to package user interfaces and thus end up being exploited by the designer. However, this extortion is eliminated by crowdsourcing since the involved platforms have well-categorized and sorted prices for various designs. Nevertheless, the community operates under reasonable pre-approved price tags. Therefore, crowdsourcing is the ultimate solution for design projects due to lower and affordable costs.

Productivity is yet another primary benefit that comes along with crowdsourcing in design projects. Most of the sourced workforce are passionate and committed to their profession and thus require minimal supervision. They strive to deliver the agreed deliverables within the stipulated timelines to avoid bad ratings in the long run. Besides, most websites offering crowdsourcing services vet their designers to ascertain their competency and dedication in their field of expertise. This aspect increases trust among the clients and creates a sense of professionalism. Therefore, a firm with a complex design project can submit its design requirements with the assurance of the best outcomes.

Crowdsourcing is incredibly important in design projects due to its diversity. Suppose a firm wishes to develop a booking website but has limited expertise in the front end. The in-house designer will only have to handle the backend and possibly hire an external expert to complete the user interface. However, it would incur unnecessary costs to search for the expert from the limited available agencies. As such, the company will be compelled to look for a diverse population with exceptional knowledge at affordable rates. This situation calls for crowdsourcing to fetch specialists across the globe to deliver the desired user interface. Crowdsourcing never falls short of talent to solve the emergent challenges in design projects.

Pittaras et al. (2019) acknowledge that crowdsourcing saves the labour-intensive nature of some projects. Several participants in crowdsourcing serve voluntarily, while others are paid, freelancers. The free agents provide a business with crucial information and opinions applicable in interface design. This approach saves the company extensive labour that would otherwise be accrued from focus groups that would possibly be formed. Acquiring the necessary information and expert ideas from online platforms facilitates the development of the most preferred project designs.

Finally, crowdsourcing provides quick results and a wide range of design options. Having many experts working on a project hastens the designing process in the best way possible. Crowdsourcing has proven as the ultimate solution to a project with short completion timelines. It provides faster responses and quick quality deliverables as desired by the client. At the same time, the customer has access to countless designs, given that multiple experts present their models for appraisal. Vast businesses have benefited from online workers, and thus, crowdsourcing is prone to reach out to countless clients.

Challenges of Incorporating Crowdsourcing in a Design Project

Despite the momentous contributions of crowdsourcing, it also faces numerous challenges, as discussed in this section. The first challenge is the design relationship that has to be established and maintained between the client and the designer (Phuttharak & Loke, 2018). Relationships are paramount in all interactions since some customers believe their experience is just as essential as the actual service they are seeking. Given that crowdsourcing is based on online interlinkage, the relationship might miss some critical values in the short term. Designers would typically visit an organization several to assess and determine the nature of project design, but this aspect is lacking in the digital approach.

Maintaining quality has also emerged as a central challenge in crowdsourcing. The notion that high pay attracts quality work is progressively diminishing. Several organizations have been disappointed by the nature of interface designs delivered by some developers. The freelancer industry is full of flakes who are simply after the money. This challenge is quite devastating as it not only equates to cost wastage but also time. Customers are easily swayed and misled by fake profiles and end up falling into the wrong hands. However, the platforms are working to eliminate this crisis in the best way possible.

Crowdsourcing has also been criticized as it can potentially provide unclean IP addresses. This is a dreadful risk, especially when dealing with a completely new stranger behind the screen. Some experts might offer seemingly unique, low cost and less disruptive solutions that might end up hurting an enterprise. They might reinstate malicious IP addresses or IP addresses claimed by other firms. Such a situation makes the client’s website vulnerable to attacks or even legal suits. At long last, the customer will not use the solution even after incurring extensive costs. This practice has been in existence for a long and continues to manifest.

Pittaras et al. (2019) add that crowdsourcing lacks long-term consistency in the working criteria. This is because a company no longer has to hire an in-house interface designer or agency who will always be present. Instead, the client documents the design requirements and posts them on the target website triggering a design contest. Eventually, the selected designer works on the project and delivers upon successful completion. However, the two parties do not have a bidding contract and thus part ways. Suppose the same company gets into the need to design a GUI for a mobile application; it might not find precisely the same expert who designed the website. The designer could be busy in other projects or absent altogether, creating the need to source a new specialist. This inconsistency might lead to conflicts between the previously designed website interface and that of the phone. This impact trickles down to the actual company’s customer base, who may feel inconsistencies between the two platforms. Long-term consistency is a roaming issue and will persist unless a permanent solution is implemented.

Lack of uniqueness is an emerging challenge in crowdsourcing, especially with the current high influx of beginners. As a result, most parts of the submitted designs seem to be derivatives. Some experts try to acquire quick cash without much strain, and such greed erodes designs’ uniqueness.

A Solution for Generating Interest in Design Projects from an Online Community

Acar (2019) suggests that creating interest in a design project from an online community can either be intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation occurs when the designers are passionate and dedicated to their services because they enjoy playing their role. Extrinsic motivation materializes when external factors compel the experts to complete their tasks. Therefore, a comprehensive solution can be obtained by blending the two approaches to cater to all elements that drive interest. This mechanism is widely deployed by large crowdsourcing platforms such as InnoCentive. Apparently, the majority of interface designers have intrinsic motivation as they enjoy playing their roles. Therefore, vast solutions can be developed by tackling the issue from an extrinsic perspective.

The crowdsourcing platforms need to ensure that the community is enticed through monetary rewards. This method seems to be one of the primary reasons people venture into the online community to solve problems. Crowdsourcing comprises diverse people, including students, private sector participants, consultants, and retirees, all trying to make income from their vast skills in interface design. Therefore, the essence of providing attractive rewards would ensure that each party engages in the project and offers their best. However, there must be measures to ensure that the clients are not extorted at the expense of creating interest from the online community.

As one of the leading crowdsourcing websites, InnoCentive has identified the need to consider anonymity among the participants of a particular project. The experts mustn’t be aware of who else is participating in the same project and the number of solutions that have been submitted. In addition, the customer’s identity should not be revealed such that independence is protected at all costs. This approach will ensure that there is no bias in judgment and evaluation of the most feasible solution. Anonymity will ensure that all participants are treated equally without favouring some parties. This mechanism will motivate more people to join the crowdsourcing community as they are assured of fair competition.

Customers should be encouraged to remain clear and precise when seeking help on design projects (Pinto & dos Santos, 2018). For instance, a client who wishes to have a banking app should present a vivid description of the desired results in the best ways possible. The graphics and colours to be used in the interface should be well-detailed to offload unnecessary guesswork from the solver’s side. Such an approach will help reduce the number of resubmissions usually made to rectify various aspects of the final deliverable. Ensuring that the designer is not overburdened is an effective mode of creating interest in the long run.

It is also imperative to attach an emotional context to any given project (Acar, 2019). The clients should detail the significance of the design to the target population and how they will benefit from it. This description will motivate the designer to deliver their best and feel the necessity of the project. At the same time, customers should also mention whether they long to acquire more interface designs in the future. They should specify whether it is a one-time project or a long-term relationship. This technique incites interest in the community as each party is motivated to go the extra mile and deliver the best outcome so as to gain future projects. Designers ought to be enticed as a strategic way of keeping them livelier.

Finally, gamifying is an alternative for creating interest in design projects from an online community. Gamification is an exceptional technique for engaging the community and promoting positive competition. Making fun of crowdsourcing leads to personal gratification and satisfaction, which designers most seek. It triggers intrinsic motivation and encourages the growth of the online community. The participants will always yearn to come back for more in the future since designing becomes more fun.

A Solution for Evaluating the Skill Set and Quality of Code Submitted by Unknown Users

Freemium crowdsourcing websites allow all kinds of designers across the globe to participate in design contests. As a result, several unknown users submit their codes that could be substandard or of excellent standard altogether. However, the bottom line is to ensure that clients get value for their money and that low-quality codes are filtered out. There lie several mechanisms of reinforcing such an evaluation strategy to rule out jokers from the online community. The below section presents some of these mechanisms from a deeper perspective to help solve the challenge in the best-fit approach.

First, crowdsourcing sites should implement and uphold a voting system to evaluate the quality of submitted codes (Lim, Lee & Kim, 2021). Several platforms, such as Quora, LinkedIn Answers, and Yahoo Answers, uphold this method to help identify the best solution to a given problem. The crowd is allowed to explore the presented solutions and vote for the most convincing answers. Therefore, the submitted codes can also be subjected to a similar evaluation to make the review less complex. The codes that garner the most votes should be considered some of the best designs, and that is how competent developers will be identified. This method has proven to be effective and thus does not require much vetting.

It is advisable to seek evaluation help from review sites that provide user-based rankings of project designers. Angle’s List is one of these platforms that require reviewers to sign up and pay a certain fee to allow standard and worthwhile reviews. Such websites rank the developers according to their past jobs and contributions to the community. The community offers unbiased opinions, and the administrators perform a thorough screening to enforce validity and reliability. The review practice can facilitate the elimination of low-quality codes and assess the skill sets of particular designers. It can serve as a long-lasting solution in filtering out incompetent participants.

Competitive evaluation approaches, including peer-vetted creative production, should also be encouraged in crowdsourcing. Allowing the designers to evaluate each other’s work without involving a third party would be the ultimate solution for analyzing skill sets. Each developer brings forward the proposed interface design, and outcomes are pooled together to allow the selection of the best solution. The submissions will then be criticized, and the peers will vote for the superior code. This program is quite effective as it does not involve public participation from inexperienced individuals.

The crowdsourcing platforms are further recommended to stipulate professional guidelines against which submitted codes will be evaluated (Kavitha et al., 2019). The policies should touch on critical interface design features, including graphic usage, navigation, design of the content layout, features of browser windows, design of texts, links, and feedback from users and support. Graphics should not be overused, and all the included icons should be meaningful. Navigation needs to be clear and bold and should avoid unnecessary dropdown menus. The multilevel browser windows that incorporate pop-ups, scroll bars, and animation-based ads ought to be discouraged. The interface should not be cluttered with irrelevant information or the complex language of the content. The included links deserve to have clear and simple names, and the search engine should be optimized to implement spelling errors. User support ought to be paramount, with simple error messages to support feedback. Skill sets and codes that violate these standards should be suppressed from the start.

Impact of Crowdsourcing on the Budget and Timeline of a Design Project

Crowdsourcing seems to have a positive relationship with the budget and timeline of a design project. Suppose a company plans to acquire a customer management system, it can incur the minimal time and budget by crowdsourcing the project. It can consider assigning the administrator’s module to the in-house developers and crowdsourcing the interface segment. This approach will ensure that each part of the project is worked on simultaneously for timely delivery. Parallel management of the two teams creates consistency, and the final product is more likely to address the current challenge. The customer management system will soon be deployed and ready for use at a minimal time and cost. The below sections justify this claim by analyzing the cost and time of the project from an in-depth view.

Labour cost reduction is one of the key benefits of using crowdsourcing in design projects (Zahay, Hajli & Sihi, 2018). This is because an organization does not have to incur costs and time recruiting, hiring, and training interface designers. Supervision is also minimized since the crowdsourced designer operates independently. At the same time, a company does not have to deal with recurring issues, including turnover crises. Therefore, resources that could be spent on these aspects are channelled to other productive roles in the long run. The on-demand environment created by crowdsourcing ensures that a firm holds only the required workforce. Crowdsourcing scraps off extraneous costs that come with staffing a department or project.

The articulation of crowdsourcing minimizes management needs, unlike when a project is completed in-house (Bhatti, 2020). It eliminates the costly day-to-day management when the team is working on a long-term project. An organization does not have to spend time overseeing project structure, cost management, and quality assurance. The online community is mandated to communicate and handle quality assurance of tasks without disrupting the client. This benefit saves a firm from strenuous daily management practices, especially in large-scale projects. The achievement allows a company to focus on its key goals and objectives with fewer hassles.

Crowdsourcing plays an integral role in eliminating overhead costs, which could potentially accrue to massive amounts. In-house interface designers require frequent benefits, which are eliminated in the online community. Besides, the cost tied to developing a functional work environment is significantly reduced. Extra expenses in paid time off, health insurance coverages, and employee-based taxes are degraded considerably. Online designers do not require utilities and space, which could otherwise be a relevant issue in the traditional method.

Giving out all roles and responsibilities related to a project to freelancers is an added advantage as it saves time. Time is a valuable internal resource that can never be recovered once lost. The crowdsource team members manage and oversee the design without involving the client. This point of view sets aside adequate time for an enterprise to concentrate on its core competencies as a strategic way of leveraging efficiency. The extra time fosters key functionalities such as product development and marketing. As a result, the business becomes more competitive, indicating that time is a valuable asset created by crowdsourcing.

Saved opportunity cost is the final impact of crowdsourcing, especially on the element of time. It avoids the opportunity cost of designing locally and in-house. The project is usually entrusted to specialized crowd workers who are readily available. They deliver projects at a faster rate leading to a drastic transformation of the business. This saves the opportunity cost of waiting for a prolonged period before gaining positive impacts. It can be summed up that crowdsourcing maximize a firm’s growth and efficiency by saving crucial internal resources.

 Crowdsourcing in the Context of Societal, Legal, and Ethical Issues

Social issues arise when crowdsourcing affects society or a member of the community, either directly or indirectly. The primary concern concerning this context is that crowdsourcing is seen as a threat to job opportunities. This is because the opportunities are entirely shifted from the local designers to the online community. Society feels that the readily available experts could complete the tasks hence retaining the resources within the society. However, the company looks at the issue differently since incorporating the local designers may incur high costs. This crisis can be solved by having a few inbuilt specialists for maintenance purposes or other recurring design needs. This solution will minimize the perceived brain drain and create harmony between the firm and society.

Legal issues seem to be the most evident challenges when crowdsourcing is involved in project designs. They occur when there is an abuse of personal information and a violation of intellectual property. Personal information is misused when the designers maliciously access personal data for illegal use. This crisis can be resolved by applying strict measures regarding data access and use. Intellectual properties are easily overridden now that crowdsourcing platforms have enormous participants creating the risk of illegal deals. As such, some designers might present interfaces and logos that another firm currently possesses. There are high chances of infringing patents, copyrights, and trademarks despite the control measures. Once people are banned from the platforms, they can readily reenter using a different account. Designers have, in several instances, failed to transfer IP rights to the clients after submitting a design project leaving the company vulnerable to attacks and legal suits. The legal issues can be rectified by reminding clients to obtain full rights grants and encouraging the designers to relinquish all rights related to the project (Alqahtani, 2017).

Ethical issues arise when people’s decisions bleach moral principles. They manifest in crowdsourcing in various forms, including privacy and accuracy of information. Privacy is a critical factor in the digital age and pertains to controlling and monitoring one’s data. However, crowdsourcing tends to make it impractical since some platforms have a black box hidden from the participants. This implies that algorithms and other complex operations might be used to access the proposed solutions in an unethical style. This crisis can be solved by being morally upright and assuring the crowd workers that their information and details are secure. Accuracy of information is a relevant issue in crowdsourcing, given that there are countless people proposing solutions. Therefore, designers should ensure they revise their products to avoid inconsistencies.

Conclusion

Crowdsourcing in the field of interface design has evolved to meet the ever-rising clients’ needs. It is currently the best choice for many individuals and companies who wish to get interactive and credible interfaces. Like any other field, it has a share of benefits and challenges in its quest to deliver services. The online community can be motivated through monetary rewards, mentions, promoting anonymity, gamification, and consistency in design instructions. Strict filtering of information can help eliminate incompetency and low-quality codes. Crowdsourcing has positive impacts on the timeline and budget of a design project despite various legal, ethical, and societal issues. Crowdsourcing in the field of research has indeed revolutionized the way of doing things and is projected to grow exponentially.

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Crowdsourcing in the field of interface design takes tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals and spreads them out among a group of people or a community. These assignments are usually done through an open call. Crowdsourcing has become increasingly popular with the growth of Web 2.0 and online communities.

Write a fifteen- to eighteen-page paper in which you:

Examine the invention and growth of crowdsourcing in the field of interface design.
Describe the impact that crowdsourcing has had on the field of interface design.
Analyze and discuss at least three benefits of incorporating crowdsourcing in a design project.
Analyze and discuss at least three challenges of incorporating crowdsourcing in a design project.
Propose a solution for generating interest in your design project from an online community.
Suggest a solution for evaluating the skill set and quality of the code submitted by potentially unknown users.
Describe how crowdsourcing may affect the budget and timeline of a design project.
Assess crowdsourcing in regard to the legal, societal, and ethical issues it raises, and suggest methods to alleviate these concerns.
Use at least five quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

This course requires the use of Strayer Writing Standards. For assistance and information, please refer to the Strayer Writing Standards link in the left-hand menu of your course. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is:

Research the benefits and challenges of crowdsourcing in the field of interface design.