Rep Present UserBob HITs

[UserBob]

I am the the requester behind UserBob HITs. I try hard to make them easy to do, keep the pay decent, pay quickly, and answer any questions promptly. If you've tried to reach me here and you haven't gotten a response, please email me at john@userbob.com or call me at 405-806-0070.

UserBob HITs ask you to record a video of the screen of your computer (or smartphone) and your voice while you complete a task. While you do this you need to talk out loud about what you are thinking. When you're done you upload the video. The developers of the website or app will watch your videos to try to understand how they could change their site to make it easier for people to use. So by doing these HITs you are helping improve these sites or apps.

Before you do a "real" UserBob HIT, I have workers complete a UserBob training HIT. I'll watch the video you upload and suggest any ways that you can improve. Then I will give you the qualification you need to do more UserBob HITs.

When you do your first UserBob HIT, you will also answer some questions about yourself. This information is used to only qualify some users for certain HITs. So don't worry if you notice these qualifications (that start with "demographic" followed by a number) being automatically assigned or revoked. For example, the developer of a makeup site might only want females to do their tests. Your responses to the demographic survey also gets shared with the customers who requests these tests to better understand what type of users like their sites best.

Here's a tutorial on doing the UserBob Training HIT -

 

[clickhappier]

Welcome! I was going to post an export of your current qual HITs, but I noticed that the current US one (other than the make-up one) requires "Total approved HITs is not greater than 10"?

Here's the requester page link, at least: UserBob

 

[UserBob]

Sorry to confuse you. Every now and then I post a HIT like that for friends that haven't done any turking before but want to be able to do UserBob HITs. So I set that one up so only people that have done less than ten HITs can accept it.

 

[clickhappier]

Sorry to confuse you. Every now and then I post a HIT like that for friends that haven't done any turking before but want to be able to do UserBob HITs. So I set that one up so only people that have done less than ten HITs can accept it.

OK. I see you've got the normal US one back up now.

Title: Training qualifier to do UserBob HITs Requester: UserBob [A1G1PATDFBA7E5] (TO) TO Ratings: 4.95 Communicativity 4.95 Generosity 5.00 Fairness 5.00 Promptness Number of Reviews: 24 (Submit a new TO rating for this requester) Description: Record your computer's screen and your voice while you spend 1 minute(s) talking about your first visit to a website. Then upload the recording. Time: 60 minutes Hits Available: 1 Reward: $1.00 Qualifications: Total approved HITs is not less than 500, HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 99, Location is US

And if we have any pre-2012 Canadians lurking:

Spoiler

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

 

[UserBob]

Just FYI, my userbob.com server seems to be misbehaving at the moment. You won't be able to do my HITs at the moment.

 

[UserBob]

It's back up. Not sure what happened yet.

 

[UserBob]

There is currently a UserBob HIT for recording an iOS app. Mac users can do this easily with QuickTime. Windows users can do this too with some other tools. Here's an article that describes one way: http://airmore.com/record-ios-screen.html

Do you have any tips for other workers on how to record your iPhone from a Windows computer?

Another way is to just point a webcam at your iPhone or iPad.

 

[UserBob]

I made a tiny change when displaying the completion code so that it gets displayed in a text field and the value is already selected. So you should be able to select it by pressing Ctrl+C. I know it's not that big of a change but maybe it saves you a second on each UserBob HIT. If you have any other suggestions on how to make UserBob HITs easier to do, please let me know.

 

[UserBob]

For users that record their iOS device using QuickTime, you can now upload the .mov file that QuickTime generates without having to convert it to an .mp4 file.

 

[UserBob]

For those of you that have an automated way of watching for UserBob HITs, do you get notified for UserBob HITs that you are not qualified for? Do you get notified when I post a new "userbob training HIT"? Also, what do you use to get notified of UserBob HITs?

 

[clickhappier]

For those of you that have an automated way of watching for UserBob HITs, do you get notified for UserBob HITs that you are not qualified for? Do you get notified when I post a new "userbob training HIT"? Also, what do you use to get notified of UserBob HITs?

I think most people just watch/look for things they're qualified for, because in general there's soooo much clutter otherwise (stuff you don't qualify for and either don't want to or can't get qualified for - I only qualify for 18% of all the HIT groups up on MTurk at the moment from all requesters). It's possible with some search/monitor methods for people to block/mute the training HITs' titles to not be notified of them, but if you want to make it easier for people to avoid extraneous notifications from those, you could add an "[a qual you grant after completing training] Has Not Been Granted" aka DoesNotExist requirement to them.

 

[UserBob]

I think most people just watch/look for things they're qualified for, because in general there's soooo much clutter otherwise (stuff you don't qualify for and either don't want to or can't get qualified for - I only qualify for 18% of all the HIT groups up on MTurk at the moment from all requesters). It's possible with some search/monitor methods for people to block/mute the training HITs' titles to not be notified of them, but if you want to make it easier for people to avoid extraneous notifications from those, you could add an "[a qual you grant after completing training] Has Not Been Granted" aka DoesNotExist requirement to them.

Amazon hasn't updated their java library since they added the "DoesNotExist" feature a couple years ago. I'll have to find a way to make this work.

 

[clickhappier]

Amazon hasn't updated their java library since they added the "DoesNotExist" feature a couple years ago. I'll have to find a way to make this work.

Ugh, classic Amazon. Here's a thread on the official requester forum where people have been complaining about this for the past year and a half to no avail. Some of the other API stuff must've been updated, bad luck that your preferred one wasn't... Since you don't need this for most of your HITs, just the static 'training' ones, perhaps it wouldn't be too inconvenient to post just those through some different method. But if it is overly inconvenient, I don't think it's a big deal if you leave it as-is; there are plenty of other requesters with HIT-posting habits that are far more inconvenient to workers than yours.

 

[UserBob]

I found a way to save a penny on my HITs. I used to give two bonuses. A 2 cent bonus if you accepted the HIT in the first hour. And a 5 cent bonus for your demographic information. Now I will add them together and give you one 7 cent bonus. Because Amazon's minimum fee per bonus was 1 cent, I was giving them an extra penny per HIT.

 

[UserBob]

I added a requirement to my training HIT for abandonment rate needing to be less than 20%. Would this have prevented you from doing this HIT?

 

[clickhappier]

I added a requirement to my training HIT for abandonment rate needing to be less than 20%. Would this have prevented you from doing this HIT?

I see now you've changed it to "HIT abandonment rate (%) is less than 30". Mine is abnormally low (<1%), but I think most workers' are still lower than 30%.

 

[UserBob]

I created a video showing one way of doing UserBob's upload screencast of a MOBILE website HIT for people with an Android phone. Please let me know what you think.

https://youtu.be/D_hCR9yopCo

 

[UserBob]

Here's a video showing a way of doing UserBob's upload screencast of a MOBILE website HIT for people with an iOS device and a Mac computer.

https://youtu.be/kAW7x0Lo3Pc

 

[UserBob]

A worker sent me a screen shot of a report that was showing that several of their HITs had not been paid yet. As a requester I can only approve or reject an assignment. Requesters must prepay mturk for the assignments of a HIT when we create them. So I have no idea why a worker wouldn't get paid for a HIT they submitted. My guess is that the report was generated by some script that is not working properly. Can anyone help me understand what might be going on?

 

[UserBob]

The two most common reasons that I have had to reject a workers submission is that the wrong file gets uploaded or the microphone was muted. Since workers hate being rejected as much or more than I hate having to reject a HIT, I've modified the upload form to help prevent these two common mistakes. Now after you select the file to upload, a preview window will display your video and immediately start playing it from the middle of the video. Below the preview are two checkboxes for you to check. One asks you to confirm that you are uploading the correct file and the other asks you to confirm that the microphone was not muted. Let me know if you have any problem with this additional step.

And just so you know, whenever I do have to reject an assignment, I will send you a message with a link that allows you to do the HIT over to have the rejection reversed.