@inproceedings{8ff4ccb5aa6e4596917ff70cbc9bfc13,
title = "Monotasking or multitasking: designing for crowdworkers{\textquoteright} preferences",
abstract = "Crowdworkers receive no formal training for managing their tasks, time or working environment. To develop tools that support such workers, an understanding of their preferences and the constraints they are under is essential. We asked 317 experienced Amazon Mechanical Turk workers about factors that influence their task and time management. We found that a large number of the crowdworkers score highly on a measure of polychronicity; this means that they prefer to frequently switch tasks and happily accommodate regular work and non-work interruptions. While a preference for polychronicity might equip people well to deal with the structural demands of crowdworking platforms, we also know that multitasking negatively affects workers{\textquoteright} productivity. This puts crowdworkers{\textquoteright} working preferences into conflict with the desire of requesters to maximize workers{\textquoteright} productivity. Combining the findings of prior research with the new knowledge obtained from our participants, we enumerate practical design options that could enable workers, requesters and platform developers to make adjustments that would improve crowdworkers{\textquoteright} experiences. ",
keywords = "Crowdsourcing, Crowdwork, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Multitasking, Polychronicity, Productivity",
author = "Laura Lascau and Gould, {Sandy J J} and Cox, {Anna L.} and Elizaveta Karmannaya and Brumby, {Duncan P.}",
year = "2019",
month = may,
day = "2",
doi = "10.1145/3290605.3300649",
language = "English",
series = "Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019)",
address = "United States",
note = "ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019) ; Conference date: 04-05-2019 Through 09-05-2019",
}