Introducing human.io

http://joshua.schachter.org/2012/08/introducing-humanio.html

by nikunjk • 14 years ago

103 102 14 years ago

joshua.schachter.org

pud3• 14 years ago

Joshua is brilliant and I want to love this!

But I wish there were a specific example of what it does.

Something that starts with, "Let's say you run a site and need [x]. Here's how human.io can help you with that..."

Otherwise it's too much work for me to try and figure out what it does, or how I'd use it. Even though I'm sure it's great - because Josh made it.

aditya2• 14 years ago

Maybe this'll help? http://photohunt.human.io/

pud3• 14 years ago

Human.io helps you embed photos into a long web page?

(I know that's not what it does. But just illustrating my point. Don't make me, the user, figure it out. Just tell me.)

webwright2• 14 years ago

+1. I've spent 5x the amount of time trying to understand this than I would for anyone else-- because I think Joshua is brilliant. But I'm still flummoxed. Is it like mechanical turk? Tasty Labs could really benefit from a designer, methinks. Not just to make it pretty, but to empathize with/advocate for their audience.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Agreed. We are circling in on better explanations.

(FWIW it took a few YEARS before I was able to explain tagging and group behavior on delicious cogently. This process is not surprising.)

So, yes, it's a bit like mechanical turk. Hopefully some of the usage will be driven by participatory urges rather than getting 5c per transaction (though we will probably empower that sort of payment, and more. Offers etc.)

joshu36• 14 years ago

It is through criticism like this that we continue to hone the message. Thank you.

The problem is that what we have built is very, very broad, so narrowing it is difficult.

The platform lets you send people little bundles of UI and have them interact. That's incredibly broad and vague!

So here are some examples: You could get them to take pictures of all the storefronts in a town. You could send them realtime surveys to go along with a television show. You could have them rate sessions at a conference. You could have someone be notified when they walk onto a car dealership and offer them the chance to look up car prices.

Explaining this with one line has been very difficult so far. My favorites so far are: 1) Turn a passive audience into engaged particpants. 2) Turn your audience int your army.

pud3• 14 years ago

> Turn a passive audience into engaged particpants. 2) Turn > your audience int your army.

That's marketing speak.

How about: "Let's say you want to build a website that shows the different rates for parking garages around San Francisco, but you don't have the pricing data. Human.io can help you get hoards of strangers to run around the city, snapping pictures of pricing signs at garages, and uploading the pictures to you. Viola, now you have the data."

Is that vaguely what human.io can do?

natrius• 14 years ago

This is a great idea, but I had to read the blog post, read the home page, then re-read the blog post to fully grasp why I'd want to use it, and now I have a great idea for how to utilize it for something I'm building. There has to be a better way to get the idea across, but I'm not sure what it is. The "Some things you can do" part of the homepage was the most useful part for me. Emphasize that more?

paulrademacher2• 14 years ago

> The "Some things you can do" part of the homepage was the most useful part for me. Emphasize that more?

That's a good idea, thanks. I'll move the section up higher.

We're trying to tell two stories on that page. The developer story: an easy way to write simple apps and target them at specific people via some criteria. The user story: join interesting activities by companies and developers you enjoy or want to help out.

joshu36• 14 years ago

That is good feedback. We will work on it more. Thank you.

mmahemoff• 14 years ago

It seems to be Mechanical Turk for mobile users.

miniatureape• 14 years ago

It's a great idea and I hope the term "publishers" isn't limited to businesses. I always wanted a little service like this I could ask questions to: "I parked my car at the corner of Housten and Orchard, can someone confirm I don't have any tickets." "I heard XYZ closed down, can someone tell me if they're still in business."

But in my opinion:

>> It allows you to script with humans as easily as you would script with software.

Is a disgusting phrase.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Publishers -> someone who publishes tasks or has an audience of some sort. Not necessarily businesses.

Hmm. It allows you to get people to do a sequence of actions (provided the right motivation.) What would express it better?

clavalle• 14 years ago

It'd be nice if you could pay users so you don't just become another bothersome mosquito in their pocket.

For example: Say I need something from the county records of some place far from me but I need them quickly. I place a human.io call to pay $50 to whomever takes a picture of a series of documents first. That could be huge.

aaronbrethorst• 14 years ago

Isn't that Zaarly?

joshu36• 14 years ago

Or taskrabbit.

Think of human.io as more of the platform you might build one of these on. We're not reselling a labor pool, we're making it possible to stay engaged with one, especially for folks that have large audiences that aren't particularly engaged (newspapers, etc.)

tptacek2• 14 years ago

Human.io's job is to sell the developers. The developer's job is to sell the humans. I think I have that right.

Imagine if the Chicago Tribune wanted to build data-driven apps from people on the streets downtown. Just like if they wanted to do telephony apps they'd have to spend $300k getting Asterix wired up properly and Twilio makes it work out of a Sinatra app; similarly, my sense is, Human.io is trying to do that for people-driven apps.

joshu36• 14 years ago

This is exactly correct. We need to make it easy for developers to sell the humans.

(In my parlance, publishers are the people with audience, developers are the people who code, and audience are the people that use the phone. In the wacky future, they may only be indirectly connected.)

revicon• 14 years ago

Gigwalk has been doing this for quite a while.

brucehart• 14 years ago

I like the idea, but it isn't clear to me what motivates the users to participate. Can the developer offer some sort of financial incentive to the users?

joshu36• 14 years ago

I think there are going to be different kinds of users and different kinds of task publishers. Each will utilize different motivations around what they do. We are working on a way to allow this. I think that payments are good, but there's also coupons/offers, gamification or social standing, participatory privilege, etc.

I worry that if we do micropayments for microtasks we'll end up in a very specific pigeonhole that isn't insanely interesting.

tumultco• 14 years ago

I agree, I'm unsure of what the hook is for someone to download the mobile app and use it. Perhaps it would make sense if human.io came as a framework developers could import in their existing apps?

With this, they could potentially send out notifications to just their audience when participation would be useful. Completing tasks could also be a micropayment allowing the developer to give the user some sort of reward (like unlocking bonus features).

joshu36• 14 years ago

This is exactly correct. We expect publishers to talk about the task to be done and the motivation for doing so as the primary thing (and the fact that it happens to run on the human.io client or in a browser or whatever as secondary.)

mynegation• 14 years ago

The more I look at what is happening with technology the more I am likely to declare Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End a prophetic book.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Yeah. I hope this is a good thing.

rgrieselhuber• 14 years ago

What inspired you to build this? It might help us understand it better.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Mechanical Turk + Twilio + Phones.

We built it first. Now we're figuring out what it can do, exactly :)

147• 14 years ago

Where'd you get that pretty header for the photo hunt page?

joshu36• 14 years ago

I think it's CSS?

fourstar• 14 years ago

It's from Bootstrap's new header.

JulianWasTaken2• 14 years ago

This is really cool, and I'll definitely be checking it out, but "If Twitter is HTML, then Human.io is CGI." has to be the worst pitch line ever.

joshu36• 14 years ago

I'm not in love with it. It's hard to come up with a good line.

Hit me with some better ideas?

jcater• 14 years ago

Human.io: The real-world interaction engine.

Human.io provides a robust platform for creating mobile activities for people to perform in real life. Quickly create interactive apps that take full advantage of mobile GPS, video, and photo capabilities, promoting rich responses to surveys, games, or contests. Plus, using our integral filtering API, you decide exactly who gets to see and run your app. Push out your app to people based on location, demographics, or your own custom filters.

sakai• 14 years ago

"Script with humans" made me shiver a bit. Evocative copy to be sure, but perhaps a bit too Orwellian.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Totally happy to try something else. Any ideas?

tren• 14 years ago

Looks like a great idea. Completely off-topic, for curiosity sake - when I go to download it through the App Store, the language options are English, German, Spanish and Northern Sami??

joshu36• 14 years ago

The app uses PhoneGap, which has a wacky default build template. It will be fixed in the next release.

par2• 14 years ago

I think this is awesome! As soon as I saw the photohunt I knew the massive implications of this. I feel like this could be one of those things 'cell phones were made for'. I'm curious about how people will use it.

The UI on the android app could use a little work though. I'm sure you'll get to that soon enough. Nice job!

joshu36• 14 years ago

Thanks!

What's specifically wrong with the android app, so I can make sure Paul & co see them?

par2• 14 years ago

Nothing specifically, just feels like it needs a little more UI loving. I felt like tapping the results on the survey widget was a little cumbersome. Maybe the buttons could be wider or more responsive.

chime• 14 years ago

Have you thought about making this a web-app (or Facebook app) too? Sure, you won't be able to get Geo-tagged photos but not all the tasks require mobile devices.

joshu36• 14 years ago

We can run in a browser already. We'll probably get to it, but we're mostly focusing on mobile for now.

Sharma• 14 years ago

My suggestion for human.io description: We provide brains.Scalable and real. Need data to prove something? Need feedback on your idea? Need an idea to work on? Human.io can help. You create a task we provide crowd. Don't need any of these? Join and help others.Fun is guaranteed!

firebones2• 14 years ago

I am excited by this for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it seems like a true joshu project--simple infrastructure that uses simple approaches to engage crowds in collaborative activities. With del.icio.us it was enabling structured discovery via folksonomy, with human.io it is enabling broadening the reach of crowdsourcing. (If only I could somehow coin the term turksonomy and have it make sense in this context.)

A couple of crazy ideas would be to use this to perhaps improve upon that niche that Flickr and Twitter are sometimes used for, which is crowd sourcing collection of digital media for some event (like a concert, conference or news event). Instead of showing live tweets as a screensaver at a conference, show images collected via human.io.

I also think there is a huge potential for creating interactive narratives and even games.

When I try to explain the idea to people, though, the question is always "what is in it for the worker?". With delicious, the creation of a good folksonomy that added value to the ecosystem was simply a side effect of the selfish benefit of keeping track of your own bookmarks. That's why I think for human.io to go viral to the point where you have a large and engaged workforce, you need to find its "win/win" proposition. It could simply be the game aspect (see games with a purpose) or maybe a give a little/get a little dynamic.

Great stuff...can't wait to see how this one evolves.

joshu36• 14 years ago

Credit where credit is due - Paul had the idea. I kept talking about labor pools and mturk etcetera being the future.

Your ideas (conference photos, narratives, etc) are really good ones. Want to prototype some?

I'm not sure that viral is necessary. Delicious was never viral in any way. Just useful.

("turksonomy" - hee)

firebones2• 14 years ago

Okay, not viral, but I think there has to be some psychological hook for the worker that gives them benefit for the small barter of time and effort. Novelty gets you in the door, maybe boredom, but then again if I am bored, I can always just start answering election year push polls.

Some way for workers to see value besides karma or a pay rate of $3/hour is what I haven't figured out yet.

Viral in the classic sense might not have described delicious, but I will say that I had a much richer and more interesting and more professionally useful social network of followers and followed people on delicious than any network since...Twitter is the heir for this kind of network-filtered firehouse of interesting stuff, and Quora almost could get there, but delicious had more impact per byte than either of those. I always considered it somewhat viral in the sense that I had maybe a dozen coworker colleagues I followed plus a smattering of random people who turned out to essentially be high-signal, curating SMEs for various interest areas I needed.

I am working on prototyping ideas as time allows, but still working though the examples so far.

gizzlon• 14 years ago

"what is in it for the worker?"

My first thought exactly. This could be epic for so many things that are not practical today. Maybe the incentive could just be: To get the data, you have to participate in creating it.

Would love a "how long are the lines at the nightclubs" task

Edit:

Maybe it's worth looking at how private torrent sites do this, there has to be an incentive to seed or it doesn't work. There's basically a ratio that can't drop too low, or a point system where you start >0. So you have to give X to get Y. Maybe let the users pay for "points".

hooande2• 14 years ago

It seems like human.io solves a very rare problem: "I have a lot of people who will do whatever I ask them to, but organizing the result of their efforts is difficult".

This is a very real problem for the people that have it. Imagine you have a following of hundreds of thousands of people (like joshu actually does). You could do a lot to help yourself and others simply by posting one tweet. But then you have to deal with lots of replies from different people in different formats, keep track of it over time, set up consistent systems for recognition and reward, etc.

human.io turns all of that into an api like process. But you have to explain that idea to a very large number of people, when only a tiny percentage of people even understand what the problem is like. I can understand how this would be difficult to "explain". It seems like the problem isn't so much the message, but the fact that such a specific problem has to be explained to a wide audience.

joshu36• 14 years ago

There are lots of organizations that have a huge number of interested followers but relatively little organization. Examples that come to mind are newspapers, political parties, towns, schools, viewers of a sports event, etc.

That's why I keep using the word "audience" - it is the traditional word for this kind of relationship, I think.

Does that make sense?

albertsun2• 14 years ago

This is a problem I've been thinking about a lot. The trick is the audience we have comes to us through the channels we've created.

It seems unrealistic for us to get them all to use the human.io app.

hooande2• 14 years ago

I guess I was trying to say that someone already has to have a large audience before human.io is really valuable. I can definitely see how it would help organizations, even local organizations. The issue of how to organize and utilize that audience is a big deal. It's just something that the majority of people don't have to deal with. They might see the site from the perspective of "how is this useful to me?" and see it in the wrong context.

ljd• 14 years ago

I had the exact opposite reaction. I know that not many people interact with their community outside of a tweet so it could seem like a rare problem but this API makes it easier to interact which should make interacting on this level less rare. If that makes any sense.

Take his photo scavenger hunt, if that was the only thing this thing was good for it would be a great tool for any major brand.

albertsun2• 14 years ago

This looks very intriguing but I have a bunch of questions.

Do all the end users, the "humans" have to have the human.io mobile app in order to run "apps"? Is there a way to embed the human.io app/task UI somewhere else?

Is the intention to mostly have lots of people use the human.io mobile apps? Or is this going to be more API based where developers can embed human.io apps into other places?

Is the photo scavenger hunt example an app or a task or is it an app with a single task?

joshu36• 14 years ago

Currently, the users must have the app to run the tasks. We don't currently have a way to embed the task UI. I worry that if we whitelabel it we won't see network effects.

For what it's worth, people coming in to do the photohunt app are doing other people's tasks, too.

We want to start with getting people to use the mobile apps. We are looking at other targets in the future (browsers already work. televisions? cars?)

The scavenger hunt is an app with a single task. Apps are really a developer notion - users don't see apps in the UI currently, only tasks.

This may change in the future; inside the one task are several subtasks: suggest a hunt, rate a photo, take a photo. and the "take a photo" part lets you mark a hunt as inappropriate.

In the future these could be four or five simple tasks once you have accepted the larger "task."

sazpaz• 14 years ago

I think that you should consider white labeling. Or perhaps not necessarily white labeling, but releasing SDKs to allow to use the platform from third-party apps. Obviously many app developers and companies could benefit from having it available from their own apps. I can also see value for it in the academic world. Academia is starting to dip their toes in the crowd research and this could be very valuable. But again, I don't see a benefit to actual users to download the human.io app, it seems as an unnecessary hassle. Having it available from other apps allows third-parties to offer their own benefits.

durkie• 14 years ago

super excited about this!

we run a small organization that picks fruit growing on trees all over atlanta and donates it to local homeless shelters. we have many fruit picking events that are logistically tough to organize as the trees are all over the city and in all different stages of ripening. if we had a way to break it down like: "you go check this one tree (here's the address), you go check that one, etc, and we'll build the pick around that" it'd be much much easier on us and way more engaging with folks (people love what we're doing, but we have a limited number of events and spaces within those events).

joshu36• 14 years ago

Yeah. If you have geocoded points you could have them check nearby trees. When one person does the task, you pull the task etc. do you want to try prototyping it?

benatkin• 14 years ago

I was hoping to see a more polished, more native UI in the iOS app. I was also hoping to see faster iteration of the app (more updates) early on.

The API sounds good but I may not actually try it until the UI is more compelling.

joshu36• 14 years ago

We've made a lot of progress in the app. Did you take a look? The UI is quite a bit more polished.

t_hozumi• 14 years ago

Interesting project! What is the first idea which you realized this kind of app is really needed for?

pudo• 14 years ago

The same basic thing seems to exist as an open source platform as well: http://pybossa.com/ - if you're going to base it off the interest of people to participate, why not apply that to the full stack?

Introducing human.io

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