April 16, 2008

Jason Zietz

Enhancing User Experience by Employing Collective Intelligence
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Abstract

A crowd is often smarter than you think (though if you asked a crowd that, they probably would have told you so). Since its inception, the m100 Index, which is comprised of the top portfolios managed by 100 of Marketocracy’s members, has outperformed the S&P 500 in 8 of 11 quarters. The Iowa Electronic Markets has a strong track record of correctly predicting political results, outperforming polls in presidential elections three out of four times since 1988. Given the combination of software advances, greater bandwidth availability, and the sheer number of people in the world spending time online, the Internet is a fertile ground for utilizing the intelligence of the many.

As more people use the Internet, the more important it is that these people have a positive overall online experience. User experience, the term often used to describe a person’s overall experience while using something (a web site, can opener, or cell phone, for examples), has been gaining increased attention as a necessary consideration when designing Web-based applications.

In this talk, I will provide background into both collective intelligence and user experience as they relate to Web-based applications, along with discussion of why developers should be mindful of user experience when creating Web-based applications which utilize collective intelligence. Also, I will review websites currently leveraging collective intelligence, along with examples of programming collective intelligence, including matching and grouping people and items. I will conclude the talk with suggestions of possible applications of collective intelligence in current L3D research.

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