Creativity on Paid Crowdsourcing Platforms

Abstract: General-purpose crowdsourcing platforms are increasingly being harnessed for creative work. The platforms' potential for creative work is clearly identified, but the workers' perspectives on such work have not been extensively documented. In this paper, we uncover what the workers have to say about creative work on paid crowdsourcing platforms. Through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a questionnaire launched on two different crowdsourcing platforms, our results revealed clear differences between the workers on the platforms in both preferences and prior experience with creative work. We identify common pitfalls with creative work on crowdsourcing platforms, provide recommendations for requesters of creative work, and discuss the meaning of our findings within the broader scope of creativity-oriented research. To the best of our knowledge, we contribute the first extensive worker-oriented study of creative work on paid crowdsourcing platforms.