An Introduction to Human Computation and Games with a Purpose

Crowdsourcing and human computation are novel disciplines that enable the design of computation processes that include humans as actors for task execution. In such a context, Games With a Purpose are an effective mean to channel, in a constructive manner, the human brainpower required to perform tasks that computers are unable to perform, through computer games. This tutorial introduces the core research questions in human computation, with a specific focus on the techniques required to manage structured and unstructured data. The second half of the tutorial delves into the field of game design for serious task, with an emphasis on games for human computation purposes. Our goal is to provide participants with a wide, yet complete overview of the research landscape; we aim at giving practitioners a solid understanding of the best practices in designing and running human computation tasks, while providing academics with solid references and, possibly, promising ideas for their future research activities.