Trace: A stigmergic crowdsourcing platform for intelligence analysis

Abstract

Crowdsourcing has become a frequently adopted approach to solving various tasks from conducting surveys to designing products. In the field of reasoning-support, however, crowdsourcing-related research and application have not been extensively implemented. Reasoning-support is essential in intelligence analysis to help analysts mitigate various cognitive biases, enhance deliberation, and improve report writing. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to designing a crowdsourcing platform that facilitates stigmergic coordination, awareness, and communication for intelligence analysis. We have partly materialized our proposal in the form of a crowdsourcing system which supports intelligence analysis: TRACE (Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for Collaboration and Evaluation). We introduce several stigmergic approaches integrated into TRACE and discuss the potential experimentation of these approaches. We also explain the design implications for further development of TRACE and similar crowdsourcing systems to support reasoning.