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A Culturally-Aware Tool for Crowdworkers: Leveraging Chronemics to Support Diverse Work Styles

Carlos Toxtli, Christopher Curtis, Saiph Savage

TL;DR

This paper addresses the inequities faced by crowdworkers from diverse cultural backgrounds due to standardized interfaces. It introduces CultureFit, a Chronemics-informed tool that offers monochronic and polychronic notification interfaces and a continuous-learning recommender to adapt task notifications to workers' time orientations. In a two-week, IRB-approved field study with 55 participants from 24 countries, CultureFit significantly increased wages for polychronic workers (about 258% in the reported case) while providing insights into design feasibility, user experience, and the role of cultural context in digital labor. The study contributes a culturally-aware design approach, practical design guidelines, and a dataset of over two million culture-and-work data points to support future research in CSCW and digital labor systems.

Abstract

Crowdsourcing markets are expanding worldwide, but often feature standardized interfaces that ignore the cultural diversity of their workers, negatively impacting their well-being and productivity. To transform these workplace dynamics, this paper proposes creating culturally-aware workplace tools, specifically designed to adapt to the cultural dimensions of monochronic and polychronic work styles. We illustrate this approach with "CultureFit," a tool that we engineered based on extensive research in Chronemics and culture theories. To study and evaluate our tool in the real world, we conducted a field experiment with 55 workers from 24 different countries. Our field experiment revealed that CultureFit significantly improved the earnings of workers from cultural backgrounds often overlooked in design. Our study is among the pioneering efforts to examine culturally aware digital labor interventions. It also provides access to a dataset with over two million data points on culture and digital work, which can be leveraged for future research in this emerging field. The paper concludes by discussing the importance and future possibilities of incorporating cultural insights into the design of tools for digital labor.

A Culturally-Aware Tool for Crowdworkers: Leveraging Chronemics to Support Diverse Work Styles

TL;DR

This paper addresses the inequities faced by crowdworkers from diverse cultural backgrounds due to standardized interfaces. It introduces CultureFit, a Chronemics-informed tool that offers monochronic and polychronic notification interfaces and a continuous-learning recommender to adapt task notifications to workers' time orientations. In a two-week, IRB-approved field study with 55 participants from 24 countries, CultureFit significantly increased wages for polychronic workers (about 258% in the reported case) while providing insights into design feasibility, user experience, and the role of cultural context in digital labor. The study contributes a culturally-aware design approach, practical design guidelines, and a dataset of over two million culture-and-work data points to support future research in CSCW and digital labor systems.

Abstract

Crowdsourcing markets are expanding worldwide, but often feature standardized interfaces that ignore the cultural diversity of their workers, negatively impacting their well-being and productivity. To transform these workplace dynamics, this paper proposes creating culturally-aware workplace tools, specifically designed to adapt to the cultural dimensions of monochronic and polychronic work styles. We illustrate this approach with "CultureFit," a tool that we engineered based on extensive research in Chronemics and culture theories. To study and evaluate our tool in the real world, we conducted a field experiment with 55 workers from 24 different countries. Our field experiment revealed that CultureFit significantly improved the earnings of workers from cultural backgrounds often overlooked in design. Our study is among the pioneering efforts to examine culturally aware digital labor interventions. It also provides access to a dataset with over two million data points on culture and digital work, which can be leveraged for future research in this emerging field. The paper concludes by discussing the importance and future possibilities of incorporating cultural insights into the design of tools for digital labor.
Paper Structure (48 sections, 8 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 48 sections, 8 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Universal Design.
  4. Chronemics and Different Cultural Dimensions within Time Management.
  5. Culture and Crowd Work.
  6. The Tooling Add-on Movement.
  7. Worker Community System Designs.
  8. CultureFit
  9. Polychronic Work Notification Interface.
  10. Monochronic Notification Interface.
  11. User Scenarios
  12. User Scenario for Monochronic Crowdworker: Bob
  13. User Scenario for Polychronic Crowdworker: Alejandro
  14. Methods
  15. Pre-Test Stage.
  16. ...and 33 more sections

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: Screenshots of CultureFit adapting its notification interface to workers' culture. For monochronic workers: (a) CultureFit notifies about tasks on Toloka. For polychronic workers: CultureFit notifies about tasks on Toloka while: (b) browsing other sites; or (c) engaged in other computer activities.
  • Figure 2: Overview of our study that involved a 2x2 between subject study with three different stages.
  • Figure 3: Pre-survey Overview: Monochronic vs. Polychronic Workers
  • Figure 4: Pre-Test Telemetry Log Summary for workers of different cultural groups.
  • Figure 5: Overview of workers' increase in wages from the Pre-Test Stage to the Test Stage across conditions. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. CultureFit significantly increased the wages of polychronic workers.
  • ...and 3 more figures