
Introducing human.io - nikunjk
http://joshua.schachter.org/2012/08/introducing-humanio.html
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pud
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.

~~~
webwright
+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.

~~~
joshu
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.)

~~~
Alex3917
Suggested description:

"Human.io lets you to script with humans as easily as you would script with
software. It does for the digital economy what the assembly line did for the
industrial economy.

The software allows you to dynamically assemble ad hoc armies of virtual
workers, who are then assigned to complete tasks in the real world using the
sensors and input devices on their phones: GPS, camera, microphone, and so on.

Let's say you want to X. Human.io lets you..."

Still not perfect, but I think it's a little more clear than what you have.

~~~
jyu
Going along this, Human.io, "the Human API" enables you to recruit a virtual
army's phones, GPS, camera, microphone, etc.

Sample human API tasks: 1\. photo scavenger hunt 2\. parking garage
availability 3\. male to female ratio in a club 4\. collect blind auction bids

~~~
joshu
So do you think we should BUILD more examples or just talk about them?

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_pius
Why not both?

~~~
ricardobeat

        (V)(°,,°)(V)

~~~
joshu
:D

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hooande
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.

~~~
joshu
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?

~~~
hooande
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.

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natrius
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?

~~~
paulrademacher
> 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.

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firebones
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.

~~~
joshu
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)

~~~
firebones
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.

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albertsun
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?

~~~
joshu
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
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.

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brucehart
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?

~~~
tumultco
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).

~~~
joshu
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.)

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JulianWasTaken
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.

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

Hit me with some better ideas?

~~~
jcater
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.

~~~
joshu
This is pretty great. Thank you.

~~~
JulianWasTaken
Yeah, nice, that is much better -- and joshu, hope the original comment didn't
make it sound like that was the focus of what I got out of checking it out --
I really like the idea :).

~~~
joshu
It was good feedback. Don't apologize.

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par
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!

~~~
joshu
Thanks!

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

~~~
par
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.

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durkie
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).

~~~
joshu
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?

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mynegation
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.

~~~
joshu
Yeah. I hope this is a good thing.

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clavalle
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.

~~~
tptacek
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.

~~~
joshu
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.)

~~~
tptacek
It's like the question you're asking developers is, "what if your app could be
on every block in Chicago, in real time, right now? What would you do with
that?"

Also, I think the emphasis on "humans" in your messaging obscures the point a
little. You're not so much programming humans are you are transforming them
into sensors.

In that sense, a little surprised the words "eyes and ears" appear nowhere on
your front page.

~~~
joshu
That's a good point.

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Sharma
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!

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pudo
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?

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benatkin
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.

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

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tren
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??

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

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chime
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.

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

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mmahemoff
It seems to be Mechanical Turk for mobile users.

~~~
miniatureape
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.

~~~
joshu
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?

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

~~~
joshu
Totally happy to try something else. Any ideas?

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

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

~~~
joshu
Mechanical Turk + Twilio + Phones.

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

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147
Where'd you get that pretty header for the photo hunt page?

~~~
fourstar
It's from Bootstrap's new header.

