Tutorial: Designing successful digital humanities crowdsourcing projects

Brief description of content or topic
Successful crowdsourcing projects help organisations connect with audiences who enjoy engaging with their content and tasks, whether transcribing handwritten documents, correcting OCR errors, identifying animals on the Serengeti or folding proteins. Conversely, poorly-designed crowdsourcing projects find it difficult to attract or retain participants.
This workshop will present international case studies of best practice crowdsourcing projects to illustrate the range of tasks that can be crowdsourced, the motivations of participants and the characteristics of well-designed projects. Attendees will learn about the attributes of well-designed humanities crowdsourcing projects and will be able to apply these lessons by designing and critiquing a simple crowdsourced task based on their own materials or projects.
Sample outline for half-day workshop:
• 9:00-10:30 Introductions, definitions, history and examples of types, tasks
• 10:30-10:45 Break
• 10:45-11:30 Ethics, participation and motivations in crowdsourcing; design tips for crowdsourcing projects
• 11:30-11:45 Break
• 11:45-12:30 Working in pairs/small groups: design a crowdsourcing project; optionally discuss results with the group
Contact information for workshop leader, including a one-paragraph statement of research interests and areas of expertise
Mia is currently researching a PhD in digital humanities (Department of History, Open University, United Kingdom), focusing on historians' use, evaluation of and contributions to scholarly crowdsourcing projects. She has published and presented widely on her research including user experience research and design for engagement and participation in cultural heritage and is editing a book called Crowdsourcing our Cultural Heritage (Ashgate, forthcoming). Formerly Lead Web Developer at the Science Museum Group, Mia has designed successful crowdsourcing projects, advised prestigious cultural organisations on usability and design for audience participation, and delivered full-day training workshops on crowdsourcing and data visualisation for scholarly research for the British Library's Digital Scholarship programme.
Description of target audience and expected number of participants (based, if possible, on past experience)
I have run this workshop before as a full-day workshop and have modified it for a half-day version for DH2013. Based on past experience, this tutorial can accommodate up to 24 participants. No technical or design experience is necessary but knowledge of potential or existing audiences for any relevant datasets or related tasks would be helpful in the design exercise. There are no special requirements for technical support.