SocialKeyboard: Proofreading Everyday Writings in Mobile Phones

Abstract

The flood tide of professional proofreading services has exceeded the market demand, but many pioneering competitors seem to be torn between quality and cost. Furthermore, proofreading of everyday writings has received little attention thus far, which is important for non-native speakers. In this paper, we propose SocialKeyboard that uses mobile crowd workers that can be contacted in a mobile environment. By embedding proofreading features into existing mobile keyboards, SocialKeyboard also achieves easy access anytime and everywhere in mobile environments. Moreover, it aims to induce faster responses by implementing 1) Push based task assignment to mobile crowd workers, 2) Real-time track changes, and 3) Synchronous task chaining of proofreading and verification. We present a first working prototype of SocialKeyboard and describe the interplay between Requester, Proofreader, and Verifier. Our preliminary evaluation showed promising results in terms of task speed, and we plan to perform a large-scale study in the near future.