Project Management + Mechanical Turk? Smartsheet Looks Awesome
Why didn't we think of this? Project management startup Smartsheet released a new core feature this week - integration of Amazon's outsourcing service Mechanical Turk. The Smartsheet interface will now let you set up Turk research jobs that thousands of anonymous workers around the world will split up and perform quickly for a very low price.
In the example the company provides on its product page, the user publishes a series of small work orders for research on the names and profiles of top CEOs around the country. That kind of drudgery would take hours to perform, but with Mechanical Turk it can be done on the cheap, quickly.
The Smartsheet interface for Mechanical Turk looks good to us, though we must admit that we're not regular users of the service. This sounds like a great idea, though, and we'll be excited to see if it works well for people. Far too much of the work on Mechanical Turk is for publishing spam - so putting that energy to legitimate business uses is a great idea. There's a whole lot of untapped potential there. The possible applications of bulk human labor in information work are many and are just starting to be explored.
How should a person feel about the Turks though? We admit that we were a little concerned at first; the last thing we want is to use some creepy neo-colonial crap like ODesk.com, which sends customers hourly webcam photos and screenshots of their contracted overseas labor in action, usually with their eyes flared with surprise at the intrusion.
Mechanical Turk seems different though. There appears to be a real art to using it well, and that is one thing that concerns us about the viability of Smartsheet's product.
We get our Mechanical Turk advice from Andy Baio's Waxy.org. Baio recently paid Turkers 50 cents each to upload a picture of themselves with a paper sign explaining "why you Turk." The responses were incredibly humanizing and more than a little amusing.
Would you want a project management app that let you leverage those peoples' time at a low price? That sounds like a pretty intriguing idea to us.
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Love the images!
I'd be really interested in hearing from (legit) companies that are actually using Mechanical Turk. We've been considering using it for a variety of client engagements and product ideas, mainly for instances where the technology isn't quite there yet. Main concern: unpredictability of when (if?) each item will be completed.
Thanks for the very complimentary post.
David,
If you'd like to try it out for yourself to test for accuracy and timing of results, I'm happy to set up a free account for you and spot you $10 in Turk work. Also, happy to chat with you about our own experiences with it. I'll catch your email inbound if you hit support@smartsheet.com.
Brent Frei
Founder, Smartsheet
So what exactly does one get by using Mechanical Turk within Smartsheet relative to using Mechanical Turk by itself? What is the incremental value add that Smartsheet is providing? After all, one can hand out the same task within MT and get the results back in a CSV file in any case...that data can be imported into Smartsheet or any of its competitors in exactly the same way...
What is the incremental value add that Smartsheet is providing? After all, one can hand out the same task within MT and get the results back in a CSV file in any case...that data can be imported into Smartsheet or any of its competitors in exactly the same way.
muhabbet mIRC
Answer to Incremental Value: Saves you time and logistics, and enables the non-technically oriented to utilize MTurk.
Example: Simple task – “Get all the names of the commissioners for each of the counties in Idaho.”
Smartsheet:
1. Copy – Paste list from Wikipedia into column in Smartsheet
2. Add columns “Commissioner Names”, “Source”, “Office Phone Number”
3. Highlight all Rows with a County and go to Smartsourcing Tab – click to pick pre-populated choices
4. Submit
5. Results automatically pop back into your sheet as they are answered by workers
6. Right click on any that are incorrectly completed (singularly or multi-selected) and simply choose Reject
7. Resubmit them right from there, even while waiting for the remaining results on other rows.
8. Add another column for “2009 Budget” and send that in for completion even while the other work is in process
Mechanical Turk:
1. Copy – Paste list from Wikipedia into column in Smartsheet – save it
2. Go to MTurk and fund your account
3. Start with a Template for Data Collection and Enter the Properties for your HIT
4. Next Design your Layout. Be sure you understand the concept of Merge Fields and dust off your HTML editing skills as you’ll likely need them
5. Now Preview this Template that you’ve just created and save it to your library
6. Now move on to Publishing – go find your template and select it
7. Upload that file you created in step 1 and ensure the merge fields match appropriately
8. Create a batch, preview it and confirm and publish it.
9. Now wait for the csv file of results to be posted to MTurk’s “Batches Ready for Review” web link – be sure you understand the meaning of all the codes included in the results file.
10. Once you get them, open the file and parse it into 3 files: the acceptable results, the results to be rejected and the ones that did not get answers
11. Run each of those 3 files through 3 – 8, and possibly repeat
12. Even this rendition is somewhat simplified from the real experience.
Considering the work specified will be completed for 5 cents apiece, only those few folks running 10s of thousands of HITs can justify suffering these logistics. Try both Smartsheet and MTurk and report on your experience.
-Brent Frei
Founder, Smartsheet
Should say:
Mechanical Turk:
1. Copy – Paste list from Wikipedia into column in Excel – save it
What use could Smartsheet be put to aside from easily found research? I am interested in this type of collaboration, but I am having trouble coming up with a useful practical application of it.
Smartsheet’s intended mission is to manage the world’s work. It’s an online project collaboration solution that in form, somewhat mirrors a spreadsheet, but in function is purpose-built for managing projects, tasks and to do lists with your team and/or clients. So, the primary value of Smartsheet is its work management features. Turns out that the Turk component is a super slick feature when woven into every day work. For example, I’m running a product launch; in the course of that workflow I can right click on a cell in the list of work, and for a few pennies ask someone else to:
- find a reporter’s email address
- get 100 opinions of what search string someone would use to find my product in Google
- find 30 blogs where others talk about my product category
- etc.
The point is not that you can’t do many of these things yourself with Google, but that your time is worth more than $0.20/hr. Pardon the blog title, but you can read more examples at http://www.smartsheet.com/blog/brent-frei/smartsheets-viagra-moment-smartsourcing-product-release .
Was I the only person who was disturbed that so many people were motivated by micropayments?
It is an intriguing idea but I'm not sure if anyone will use it. This is the first time I've ever heard about Mechanical Turk, is anyone using this service? Is it any good?
The service is very good if you put it to good use. See the blog post by someone that tried this out after reading this article.
http://www.davidhauser.com/MINDdrift/2009/02/amazons-mechanical-turk-used-f.html#comment-33
So what exactly does one get by using Mechanical Turk within Smartsheet relative to using Mechanical Turk by itself? What is the incremental value add that Smartsheet is providing? After all, one can hand out the same task within MT and get the results back in a CSV file in any case...that data can be imported into Smartsheet or any of its competitors in exactly the same way..
What I find interesting reading these comments is that many people are simply unable to think in a creative way... For example, people ask how Mechanical Turk could be used. Then the Smartsheet founder rattles off a bunch of examples which make total sense - and then people ask again how it could be used.
I think this is a tool that some people will figure out how to use, and others will not. People who can think in a creative way and tap into the ideas and power of a connected world will move ahead of those who cannot.
Mechanical Turk by itself? What is the incremental value add that Smartsheet is providing? Demiş arkadaş ondan işte :)
The service is very good if you put it to good use. See the blog post by someone that tried this out after reading this article.thankyou
thank you very much
What is the incremental value add that Smartsheet is providing? After all, one can hand out the same task within MT and get the results back in a CSV file in any case...that data can be imported into Smartsheet or any of its competitors in exactly the same way
Thanks for this information
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Well... SmartSheet better start promoting this and getting people hooked before someone comes along with a nice little tool that does the same and uses Google or another online document system as the backend.