HIT-Builder for Amazon's Mechanical Turk

The HIT Builder for Amazon's Mechanical Turk

What is Amazon's Mechanical Turk?
One of the best ways to understand Amazon Mechanical Turk is to complete a HIT and see what the experience is like. Visit the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, and try it out for yourself.

Terminology:
AMT - Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
HIT - Human Intelligence Task. These are tasks that you are willing to pay a worker to complete. For example, a HIT might ask: "Is there a pizza parlor in this photograph?"
HIT Group - A HIT Group is a set of HITs with the same Title. The AMT groups these HITs together into a group for the workers to process.
Qualifications - Workers can be required to take a Qualification test before they work on your HITs. HIT-Builder supports automatic and manual qualification tests.
Providers - Workers that perform work for you on the AMT.
External Question - Exclusive support in HIT-Builder, this feature allows you window your web site into the HITs that appear on the AMT.
Provider Team - Exclusive to HIT-Builder, this feature allows you to manage a set of providers that will be able to work on your HITs. You can add and subtract workers from the Provider Team qualification at anytime.
Data Sets - Exclusive to HIT-Builder, this feature allows you to import spreadsheet/DB data and include your data in your HITs for Providers to process, then export the results.

Applications:
- Transcription
- Translation
- Editing / Proofreading
- OCR / Handwriting
- Content analysis
- Image Recognition
- Blog Content Filtering
- Surveys

Requirements:
- Internet Explorer 6+
- FireFox 1.1+

The HIT Builder was designed so that Requesters could build Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) and Qualifications for Amazon's Mechanical Turk without writing a single line of code! The HIT Builder also supports the import of Database and Spreadsheet data to setup high volume applications. Once HITs have been submitted to the Mechanical Turk, the HIT Manager tab enables the Requester to review the state of any HIT assignment. Once the HITs have been processed by the workers using the Mechanical Turk, the Requester can review the results as a tabular data, graphed data or the requester can export the answers to a spread sheet. The HIT-Builder also supports the rating of Providers (Workers) and the creation of Provider Teams so that requesters can manage the pool of workers working on their HITs.

NEW FEATURE: The HIT-Builder Form Filter enables webmasters to easily route form data through Mechanical Turk system for processing. To use the Form Filter, the webmaster makes a couple of simple changes to his form to post the form data to a special HIT-Builder URL. The webmaster also sets up a HIT template in his HIT-Builder account. When form data is entered and the form is posted to the HIT-Builder URL, a HIT is created on the Turk asking providers to process the form data according to the users template. Once the form data is processed, the newly processed form data is posted to the original form processing web page. No scripting changes!

Getting Started

HIT-Builder Account creation is free and Requesters with an Amazon account can submit up to fifty dollars in HITs for no additional HIT-Builder charges under our demo plan. HIT-Builder also supports a basic plan and a power user subscription plan with low monthly fees and per HIT charges. Please view our HIT-Builder Overview video for more getting started info.

US-based Requesters: US Requesters can setup a Requester Account at Amazon.com. Setting up an Amazon Web Services account requires a US billing address and takes about 3-4 days to fund the Requester account.

Non-US Requesters: HIT-Builder now supports Mechanical Turk access for non-US and US based Requesters that do not have a Amazon web services account. DPA Software will allow you to use their Amazon account. See our FAQs for more information.

Features of the HIT Builder

The HIT-Builder can be used to create Mechanical Turk HITs for many applications. The HIT-Builder has some of the following features. Please view our HIT-Builder Overview video for more info. *features not found in Amazon requester interface.

Build Amazon Mechanical Turk HITs using our HIT Wizard or a Pro interface all from a standard browser.
Build Automatic and Manual Qualifications for your HITs and preview before posting.*
HTML tags that enable user to set the font, size, style and color of text in the HIT.*
External Question support that enables Providers to enter data on Requester web pages.*
Import / Export data into your HITs from Excel and Database Files.*
Feedback HIT results as a new data set into other HITs.*
Edit your data sets and use SQL queries to process them.*
New HIT Results user inteface to make processing HIT results fast and easy.*
Graph HIT answers statistics as bar charts, line charts or pie charts*
Create and Manage Qualifications for your HITs *
Rate and communicate with providers.*
Dynamically manage a team of providers to work on your HITs.*
Route form data through the Mechanical Turk for processing without changing scripting.*
NEW FEATURE: Input Data set info is now included and properly aligned in Results Spreadsheet *
Private HITs that only qualified Providers can see.*
Bonus Payments; that reward providers that perform great work.*
Locale based HITs; select Providers only from selected locations to do your HITs.*
Export HIT XML; exports HIT XML so you can use in programming the AMT via the web service (Power User Plan only)*

HIT-Builder Testimonials

"HIT Builder allows me to manage every aspect of my HITs. I can not imagine using The Mechanical Turk with out it !! " - Randy

"BuyersVine Inc. is delighted to use HIT-Builder. As the leading provider of Wine Selector tools and wine data, we frequently have hundreds, sometimes thousands of hits to create. HIT-Builder allows us to create them quickly and accurately. When we need support, they are there to help. It would be difficult to do what we do without Mechanical Turk and HIT-Builder." - CEO, BuyersVine Inc

"We have been using HIT-Builder for quite a while to build HITs for the Mechanical Turk. We recently started using the HIT-Builder Provider Teams feature with great success. With about 75 people on our provider team, our work is getting done much more efficiently and requires less quality assurance effort on our end. HIT-Builder remains an excellent tool for us." – Casey Ryan, Diamond Tip Research

HIT-Builder Development Services

DPA Software offers a complete set of HIT development services including project consulting, HIT development using the HIT Builder, web site applications that use the Mechanical Turk and custom Mechanical Turk web services programming. We have completed many projects using the HIT-Builder web site and have built dedicated web sites offering AMT-based services. If you have an idea or need for Mechanical Turk services, contact us via our email link above.