Pilot experiments on a designed crowdsourcing decision tool

Crowdsourcing is a new business strategy that can collaborate a large number of human workforce. The strategy is operationalised through an appropriately established crowdsourcing process. A few computer-supported systems have developed to assist several aspects of the crowdsourcing process. However, these systems mainly focus on a particular aspect rather than the whole integrated process. Furthermore, there is a shortage in empirical evidence on how the developed systems support the establishment of crowdsourcing processes. This paper presents our initial experimental evidences on using a designed decision tool in supporting the integrated crowdsourcing process. The experiments show that the designed tool is likely to improve participants' performance on designing crowdsourcing processes, but not in making the decision to crowdsource. Based on the experiment results, the paper suggests several lessons and recommendations for future research.