{"id":16094,"date":"2018-12-18T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T09:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/?p=16094"},"modified":"2023-04-01T19:54:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T17:54:37","slug":"mechanical-turk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/en\/mechanical-turk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mechanical Turk \u2013 an illusion to prototype your idea before you pour money into it"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mechanical Turk, or Wizard of Oz, is a type of prototype that allows you to test something before you\u2019ve actually built it. It’s an illusion that can save you lots of time and money.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Imagine you\u2019ve got a great idea for a complicated technical solution. You really want to let users \u2018play around\u2019 with your solution to find out how they\u2019ll react to it. There\u2019s only one problem: so far, the solution exists only in your mind. You haven\u2019t actually built it yet. Building it will cost you a lot of money, not to mention the time you’ll have to invest.<\/p>\n

What do you do? Investing loads of time and money doesn\u2019t make sense, as you have no idea how people will react to the solution. Are your assumptions valid? Do people understand your product? Are they willing to use it? It would be a shame to find out your product is useless after you\u2019ve spent a fortune on building it\u2026<\/p>\n

Ideally, you\u2019ll want to test your solution, BEFORE you\u2019ve developed it.<\/p>\n

Ridiculous as that sounds, it\u2019s actually common to have users test a product before<\/em> it exists. If you want to know how people will react to your solution, you simply have to fake it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Mechanical Turk<\/strong><\/h4>\n

You can use a so-called Mechanical Turk (or Wizard of Oz) to trick unsuspecting users into thinking they’re interacting with the real deal. You pretend to show the user a highly technical solution, while \u2018behind the scenes\u2019 it\u2019s human labour that makes it work.<\/p>\n

The Mechanical Turk prototype gets its name from an 18th century \u2018chess-playing machine\u2019 that amazed crowds for decennia. Spectators were stupefied by this ‘artificial intelligence’. Time and again the machine managed to out-smart great chess players. Among the unlucky opponents it defeated were many prominent people. Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the Turk\u2019s<\/em> victims. Eventually, it was revealed that the sophisticated machine contained a secret space. In this cunningly hidden chamber, a chess grandmaster secretly moved all the pieces, giving the Turk the appearance of the World\u2019s first artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\"The

The original ‘Mechanical Turk’, an 18th-century contraption which appeared to be a chess-playing machine.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

You might think that these days people are not so easily fooled anymore. You\u2019d be surprised.<\/p>\n

Fake it till you make it<\/strong><\/h4>\n

An entrepreneur I know, and who has grown his business into a serious force with hundreds of millions of revenue, once confessed to me how he tricked his first major clients. He had sold a sophisticated algorithm which would cleverly make all sorts of connections between matching profiles. In reality, however, the algorithm wasn\u2019t working yet. Instead, the founders stayed up all night making the connections themselves!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s relatively simple to make people believe your prototype is fully functional. And if your intention is simply to get some feedback, there is little harm in (temporarily) deceiving your test users.<\/p>\n

Imagine, for instance, you\u2019d like to know how people would react to a \u2018smart lift\u2019. An elevator which responds to voice commands. Before building such a contraption, why not fake it first? Norwegian comedians B\u00e5rd and Vegard, better known as Ylvis, showed how you can fake such an advanced lift relatively easily:<\/p>\n