This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to create a new, innovative system to manage a highly-scalable, geographically-distributed labor force through wireless technology - what is refered to as " mobile crowdsourcing." The plunging cost of handsets and the introduction of prepaid call plans have allowed individuals throughout the world to have the ability to communicate and transact electronically. This project will create the infrastructure needed to provide wireless subscribers the ability to do work and earn money - leveraging today's mobile phone's ability to send, receive and display images, audio files and text. The system will: deconstruct a client's work into "micro-tasks;" preferentially route micro-tasks to individuals most likely able to complete them; statistically analyze completed work across individual responses to automatically reach a decision on when work is complete, and who has provided the most useful input; compensate workers in proportion to the value they have added; and, finally, reconstruct the completed task for the client, with a statistical assurance the work has been accomplished correctly.
The first application of this system will be for the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. The company will integrate with several mobile carriers in Africa and South America to allow subscribers direct access to transactional BPO tasks including transcription, translation and text categorization. Communicating with workers directly through phones and emphasizing quality control on work, rather than worker will enable users to perform tasks when they want, where they want, and as they want. Automated compensation through existing mobile payment and airtime transfer systems will allow for much lower overhead costs. In addition to cost savings, however, clients who use this system to complete work will also have the benefits of: increased security (no one worker will be able to see an entire document or hear an entire audio recording), access to a scalable workforce (when "spikes" of work come through, labor can be seamlessly scaled up), and potential for very fast turnaround on work (micro-tasks can be done in parallel by many individuals, greatly reducing total time to complete a workload). Additional applications of the mobile crowdsourcing platform include data gathering related to local content and surveys, productivity tools for auditors, and mass reporting abilities following disaster-related events.
During the course of the Phase II grant, Jana has successfully constructed a mobile technology platform through which consumers in emerging markets can build relationships with brands. This platform is a new model for mobile advertising: a mutual data exchange through which consumers can be reimbursed for the cost of engaging with brands in the form of mobile airtime. New products and platforms, launched throughout the last year, have been vital to making this data exchange possible. Jana Marketplace™ is a new advertising product, launched in March 2014, which allows brands to deliver relevant content to emerging market consumers through their mobile phones. Through mCent – Jana’s consumer facing mobile platform - emerging market consumers become members of mCent, and then receive relevant mobile content tailored to their interests, location, culture, and past behavior. mCent Match™, a personalization algorithm, powers the relevancy and precise targeting of Jana Marketplace™. In order for Jana to successfully bring these products and platforms to launch during Phase II, the following tasks were completed: Accounting System: Jana built an accounting system for tracking the prepayment of SMS and airtime transfer costs. It is used to track 70 currencies across over 100 vendors. Respondent UIs: Jana’s platform is tailored to emerging markets. It has a simple join flow, is integrated with Facebook’s UI, and responsive to a full-range of devices and web UIs. Stress Tests: Periodical testing of the platform has allowed Jana to create a scalable architecture to support future traffic growth. Carrier Integration: Addressing issues related to poor carrier infrastructure in emerging markets, Jana put in place automated systems to identify infrastructure failure. System Analytics: Jana significantly improved data collection processes by adding a Hadoop cluster to its system. This enabled Jana to modify and improve user interfaces. Testing: Jana has added new testing and QA processes, including a Jenkins server to automatically run tests against new code. White-Label Mobile Web App: Jana created a self-serve interface to allow clients to launch surveys that are configured to their brand.
