I went to this amazing workshop this weekend at CHI. It was a 2-day work shop where we came up with lots of ideas and pitches, broke into small groups, and MADE THINGS. We also played random physical games including an intense match of dodgeball that came down to Steve Drucker vs. a group of five. I'm hoping someone else summarizes all the amazing projects. I'm just going to write down some reflections based on my group's project and dinner discussions.
Context: My group's goal was to create an interesting creative artifact, like a book or collection of stories or photos. We eventually settled on a theme of trying to capture a snapshot of Mechanical Turkers lives and the interesting stories they each want to tell. We made a few separate mturk hits asking people to submit a photo (either through email or through a webcam) and write a story, based on one of a number of different prompts. Throughout the weekend, we experimented with many different story prompts, yielding a variety of responses, some more interesting or more authentic (and not ripped off wikipedia) than others. There will be an official blog post soon, but here's a link (that won't be around forever) to some of the pictures and stories: http://23.21.100.126/view.html
The three things I want to discuss, then, are 1) feedback cycles 2) spontaneity and creativity and 3) the end artifact versus the process. Also, for fun, jumpstarting memes at the end of the post!
There's a fun little crowdsourced book of cat stories (http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/) put together by Bjoern Hartmann, one of the other guys at the workshop. I adore the idea behind it and that the book actually exists, and I own a copy. But frankly, I'm disappointed in the quality of the cat stories. I'm sure these cats, my cats, other cats have done far more interesting things. Perhaps the silliest thing my cats have done is "drive" their cardboard firetruck into the bedroom in the middle of the night. PICTURE! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaflurbaleen/4968850498/ I had to go look at photos to come up with that story there. I am fairly sure the cats in the book have done more exciting things than what ended up in print.
The photos and stories that came back from workers this weekend (excluding the fake ones) were kind of bland. My hypothesis is that if you ask someone on the internet (a mechanical turk worker specifically) to write/draw/do something interesting completely out of the blue, they probably won't come up with something that interesting. First, it's kind of awkward to be paid to be creative (but some of our turkers were pretty creative, so maybe that's not a huge problem). Second and more importantly, they're not primed to say anything interesting right then and there.
It's also possible that the prompts just weren't the right ones to spark creativity. Consider: "Write a story about your cat" vs. "What's the most surprising thing your cat has ever done?" We looked at some of the original photos people took in response to prompts like "your most prized possession, your hands, your shoes" and came up with new themes that were a little more flippant, but elicited some enjoyable photos. These new prompts included "make a hat" and "make a scene out of 2-5 objects around you". Personally, I enjoyed the photos and stories from these prompts much more.
I am most interested in designing opportunities to _participate_ in creative, collaborative experiences. You could take up drawing, or you could take up drawing within a social and constrained framework, like drawing a picture of an animal every day for a month and sharing those drawings with others. Like this! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaflurbaleen/sets/72157626192792880/
Context: My group's goal was to create an interesting creative artifact, like a book or collection of stories or photos. We eventually settled on a theme of trying to capture a snapshot of Mechanical Turkers lives and the interesting stories they each want to tell. We made a few separate mturk hits asking people to submit a photo (either through email or through a webcam) and write a story, based on one of a number of different prompts. Throughout the weekend, we experimented with many different story prompts, yielding a variety of responses, some more interesting or more authentic (and not ripped off wikipedia) than others. There will be an official blog post soon, but here's a link (that won't be around forever) to some of the pictures and stories: http://23.21.100.126/view.html
The three things I want to discuss, then, are 1) feedback cycles 2) spontaneity and creativity and 3) the end artifact versus the process. Also, for fun, jumpstarting memes at the end of the post!
Feedback Cycles
An initial idea that kind of got buried under other ideas was to have creative cycles or iterations in which the people making (pieces of) the final creative artifact built off of or saw other people's work. If I could go back in time, I would push that idea more, but I have my own examples of it working awesomely.There's a fun little crowdsourced book of cat stories (http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/) put together by Bjoern Hartmann, one of the other guys at the workshop. I adore the idea behind it and that the book actually exists, and I own a copy. But frankly, I'm disappointed in the quality of the cat stories. I'm sure these cats, my cats, other cats have done far more interesting things. Perhaps the silliest thing my cats have done is "drive" their cardboard firetruck into the bedroom in the middle of the night. PICTURE! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaflurbaleen/4968850498/ I had to go look at photos to come up with that story there. I am fairly sure the cats in the book have done more exciting things than what ended up in print.
The photos and stories that came back from workers this weekend (excluding the fake ones) were kind of bland. My hypothesis is that if you ask someone on the internet (a mechanical turk worker specifically) to write/draw/do something interesting completely out of the blue, they probably won't come up with something that interesting. First, it's kind of awkward to be paid to be creative (but some of our turkers were pretty creative, so maybe that's not a huge problem). Second and more importantly, they're not primed to say anything interesting right then and there.
Spontaneous Creativity
The corollary to the above hypothesis is that you could very easily prime these people to be creative by showing them other people's stories. Maybe they'll try to write something less boring than someone else. Maybe another person's story will trigger a memory. Maybe knowing someone else (especially another turker) might see it will raise the bar.It's also possible that the prompts just weren't the right ones to spark creativity. Consider: "Write a story about your cat" vs. "What's the most surprising thing your cat has ever done?" We looked at some of the original photos people took in response to prompts like "your most prized possession, your hands, your shoes" and came up with new themes that were a little more flippant, but elicited some enjoyable photos. These new prompts included "make a hat" and "make a scene out of 2-5 objects around you". Personally, I enjoyed the photos and stories from these prompts much more.
Artifacts vs Process
There was a comment at dinner about a "saturation" of stories in the world. I'm not sure I agree, but I definitely think there's more being produced than there is time to consume it. Consider a recent film called "Life in a Day" that was compiled out of thousands of youtube videos all filmed on the same day. It took a fancy director to turn 4,500 hours of video into a manageable 1.5 hours. Now it's all about the artifact, but the experience of submitting a video has value, too, even if the final video was never made, I would argue.I am most interested in designing opportunities to _participate_ in creative, collaborative experiences. You could take up drawing, or you could take up drawing within a social and constrained framework, like drawing a picture of an animal every day for a month and sharing those drawings with others. Like this! http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaflurbaleen/sets/72157626192792880/
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