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Handbook of Human Computation pp 393–409Cite as

Designing Systems with Homo Ludens in the Loop

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Abstract

A recurrent challenge for human computation is motivation. Motivation is not only a prevailing topic for crowd based human computation it is also multifarious. Contributors support human computation projects for money, fun, and many other reasons. Probably the most appealing motivation from a requester’s perspective is an intrinsic interest in the task itself, although this is a rare situation. Therefore, when designing a human computation system a key challenge to accept and handle is to offer a valuable reward for contributors. One possible approach to this challenge is to design human computation systems in a way that makes their use an inherently pleasurable experience. A powerful concept to make tasks more pleasurable is to use game design to add playful elements to the task or merge the task completely into a digital game. This chapter describes concepts, methods, and pitfalls of this approach. It will give hints to identify suitable tasks, design an overall strategy, and deal with the evaluation of data in playful human computation systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Moni Naor used the term humans in the loop in a position paper explaining the basic concepts of human computation (Naor 1996).

  2. 2.

    The term homo ludens (Man the Player or Playing Man) dates back to Dutch cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. He highlights the importance of play in the human quest for meaning in his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Huizinga 1944).

  3. 3.

    http://store.steampowered.com/

  4. 4.

    www.gwap.com

  5. 5.

    www.kongregate.com

  6. 6.

    www.newgrounds.com

  7. 7.

    https://code.google.com/p/gamelab/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz University, Appelstrasse 9A, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Markus Krause

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  1. Markus Krause
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Correspondence to Markus Krause .

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  1. ThinkSplash, LLC, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

    Pietro Michelucci

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Krause, M. (2013). Designing Systems with Homo Ludens in the Loop. In: Michelucci, P. (eds) Handbook of Human Computation. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8806-4_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8806-4_31

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