  Crime solving is a domain where solution discovery is often serendipitous.
Unstructured mechanisms, like Reddit, for crime solving through crowds have
failed so far. Mechanisms, collaborations, workflows, and micro-tasks necessary
for successful crime solving might also vary across different crimes.
Cognitively, while experts might have deeper domain knowledge, they might also
fall prey to biased analysis. Non-experts, while lacking formal training, might
instead offer non-conventional perspectives requiring direction. The analytical
process is itself an iterative process of foraging and sensemaking. Users would
explore to broaden solution space and narrow down to a solution iteratively
until identifying the global maxima instead of local maxima. In this proposal,
my research aims to design systems for enabling complex sensemaking tasks that
require collaboration between remotely located non-expert crowds with expert
crowds to compensate for their cognitive challenges and lack of training. This
would require better understanding of the structure, workflow, and micro-tasks
necessary for successful collaborations. This proposal builds upon previous
work on collaborative sensemaking between remote partners in lab experiments
and endeavors to scale it across multiple team members, with varying expertise
levels.
