Creativity is critical to solving complex problems, developing new strategies, facilitating innovation, and driving organizational change. NIST’s Public Safety Communications Research Division’s open innovation efforts focuses on advancing wireless communications for America’s first responders by leveraging expertise and innovative solutions through crowdsourcing and collaboration. Success relies on creating competitions that achieve NIST’s organizational goals, incentivize world class science, remove barriers to entry, and maximize participation. Not an easy equation to balance. This session will discuss how design tradeoffs are considered for a variety of competition elements as concepts develop into a competition and as competitions are implemented. The goal of this interactive session is to provide a behind-the-scenes view of our process, engage audience ideas, and dive into a discussion about crowdsourcing and contestant-centered design.

1. Contestant Centered Design:
creative approaches to designing
competitions
Crowd Sourcing Week October 2018

2. Balancing
PointOrganizational
Needs
Contestant or
Participant
Needs
Barriers to
Participation
Implementation
Time &
Resources
Risks
Others
Elements

3. User
Centered
Design

4. Contestant
Centered
Design
Contestant’s
point of view
Needs /
desires of the
contestants
Design a
solution
Implement,
assess,
document,
and validate

5. Challenge
Life Cycle

6. Context &
Examples
• Overview of recent challenges hosted by
NIST Public Safety Communications Research
Division as context
• Discuss an example of contestant centered
design within this context

7. 7
Context #1
Public Safety Code: <X>
• A public private partnership focusing
coding and software expertise on the
communications and technology challenges
facing first responders and public safety
professionals
• Includes 10 specific technology contests,
10 unique regional events, with activities
interspersed to engage and recruit
contestants
• Leads up to national final event
• Estimated launch March 2019

8. • Contestant’s point of view
• Ambiguous challenge
• Needs / desires of the contestants
• Clear, concise, approachable, broadly relatable
• Design a solution
• Expand multi disciplinary design teams to include
sample contestants or other external SMEs
• Implement, assess, document and validate
• Focus group, workshop, collecting rankings, data,
strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Contestant
Centered
Design
Example #1

9. 9
Context #2
Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge
• This 2-stage challenge is designed to
create new or improve existing methods
of data de-identification, in a way that
makes de-identification of privacy-
sensitive datasets practical and useful to
the research community.
• Prizes totaling $190k for 2-stages
• Estimated stage 2 launch in October 2018

10. • Contestant’s point of view
• How would our approach benefit from a multi –
disciplinary partnership?
• Needs / desires of the contestants
• Existing community wants to partner with other
communities with complimentary skills
• Design a solution
• Purposefully connect tangential communities,
create opportunities for contestants to
coordinate and collaborate
• Implement, assess, document, and validate
• Strategic assessment of communities, outreach
and implementation approaches to encourage
partnerships
Contestant
Centered
Design
Example #2

11. Context #3 & #4
Unmanned Aerial Systems Flight Time
& Payload Challenge
• This 3-stage challenge was
designed to keep wireless
communications equipment
airborne at a set location for the
longest time possible to support
first responder missions.
• 11 winners with prizes totaling
$250,000 and $38,000 travel funds
• The competition ran from 1/8/18 –
5/24/18 11

12. • Contestant’s point of view
• Am I on track?
• Needs / desires of the contestants
• Interim feedback, Q&A, etc.
• Design a solution
• Regular check ins and standardized format
• Implement assess, document, and validate
• Keep track of contestants, document issues, close
out pending requests
Contestant
Centered
Design
Example #3

13. • Contestant’s point of view
• Barrier to participation – can I afford to join this?
• Needs / desires of the contestants
• Seed funding to get started
• Design a solution
• Cash prizes and other awards provided at each
stage
• Implement, assess, document, and validate
• Steady stream of incentives, some pressure, and
information on how to redesign in the future
Contestant
Centered
Design
Example #4

14. Context #5
Virtual Reality Heads-Up Display Navigation
Challenge
• This 4-stage challenge was designed to advance
UI for first responders to complete navigational
tasks. Contestants created a prototype heads-up
display in a PSCR VR environment to evaluate the
UI/UX and navigation capabilities.
• 6 winners with prizes totaling $87,500 and
$24,000 travel funds
• The competition ran from 1/2/18 - 6/6/18
14

15. • Contestant’s point of view
• What could I have done to perform better?
• What can I do next?
• Needs / desires of the contestants
• Customized Feedback
• Design a solution
• Post challenge discussions
• Implement, assess, document, and validate
• Ideas, recommendations, etc.
Contestant
Centered
Design
Example #5

16. Craig
Connelly
Prize & Challenge
Specialist
• Reflect on your own process
• How and when is the prospective of the
contestant or participant integrated into your
approach?
• Does your process have the ability to use
feedback from contestants or participants?
• What are some ways that you are using that
feedback?
• How do you define your balancing point between
contestant and organizational needs?
• Share your experiences with us, we’re committed
to continual improvement
Conclusions