Beyond a One-Size-Fits-All Approach: Towards Personalizing Multi-device Setups in Crowdwork

Non-workstation devices provide mobility in the sense that they enable work and play in less constrained environments and configurations. Workers have different needs and preferences in terms of work practices that impact work-life balance. One way to increase mobility is to allow for more choices in both workstation and non-workstation devices. This paper investigates whether workers’ preferences for using different devices are distinct. To understand whether these differences in preference exist, we use data from an exploratory qualitative survey of 150 crowdworkers from Amazon Mechanical Turk. We first identify the aspects that influence crowdworkers’ preferences in using non-workstation devices. Next, our thematic analysis of open-ended data indicates that different workers have different preferences for multi-device configuration. Finally, this leads to a discussion of how people have different preferences which would require different non-workstation devices.