POKET: Platform for Task-Based Work

Academic researchers across universities are often conducting field research which can be very costly, as it requires the hiring of enumerators to travel to remote communities to collect data. However, all the while, there are often students across a campus who already reside in these communities, that would be willing to complete these field-tasks. Unfortunately, there are no seamless platforms that enable university researchers to connect with students for paid research tasks.

POKET is a smartphone-based solution for academic researchers to deploy their own crowdsourcing engagements for research projects. The focus is on use-cases that can benefit from self-reported data, citizen-generated data, participatory mapping or community-driven insights. Universities, NGOs and high-schools empower students with our app to enter data in exchange for rewards. Some examples can be mapping informal merchants, community-based surveillance, market access to supplies, household surveys, etc. 

Marginalized communities across the Global South are data- scarce, and academic researchers require pertinent data in LATAM and the Caribbean. They often lack the resources OR boots on the ground to be able to collect it at scale. COVID-19 has only made this challenge worse. 

As an example, it is estimated that approximately 1 billion merchants still remain unmapped (CityLabs, 2015). The majority of these are informal merchants that exist in emerging LATAM countries like Mexico. As an example, with the help of university students who were paid to crowdsource data using our platform in their communities, we concluded that 65%+ of pharmacies in Lagos are estimated to be unmapped and offline. Most students are digital natives, are willing to complete data-entry tasks for money, and keen to participate in field research and projects.

Mostly importantly, youth unemployment is at an all-time high, particularly since COVID-19 struck these communities. Although the human capital and access to technology (low-cost smartphones) for generating this data and mapping is rapidly becoming more accessible, there is no tool for students to generate data about themselves or their communities, and be rewarded for them in the process...until now!

POKET retrofits our suite of mobile/desktop tools so academics can generate location-specific insights in a community, while rewarding them back in the process. The too

1. Crowdsourcing App: An app for students or closed communities to generate location-specific data about themselves/their communities, and get rewarded for it. If data generated is approved by the client, then citizens get points. These points can be converted into real-world rewards like mobile money transfers, gift cards, etc. So, students are incentivized to complete self-reported data tasks within their communities, at their convenience, and are rewarded for their contributions!

2. Inspector: This is a tool to screen the crowdsourced data. For example, if the image is unclear, the description is poor, or the data is no longer relevant, our AI-engine combined with human verification allows NGOs, researchers and public sector organizations to reject it and ensure only high-quality data enters the database and is viewable on a map.

3. Dashboard: A web-based tool for NGOs, researchers and public sector organizations use to visualize all crowdsourced data, with customized filters and insights. It also enables the client to see the activity of participants in the community and issue rewards to the right user. 

1) Public Sector Organizations: Lack appropriate tools for citizens to keep government groups accountable for public services/infrastructure, mapping public assets (ex. healthcare outlets) or observations (ex. mask-wearing behaviour, lack of social distancing, etc) or self-reported (ex. tracking symptoms). As an example, we are already exploring an engagement for in conjunction with an American university and a public health agency in Mexico to have students crowdsource food merchant data using our platform. 

2) International NGOs: Need high-frequency data at the local level around feedback on an intervention. They also want to empower their beneficiaries to self-report data, but lack appropriate tools. We launched our full solution in late 2020 and are already co-developing programs alongside major NGOs such as Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE, PATH, Americares, and BRAC to name a few. We are also exploring an engagement in the Carribbean with a major health NGO to reward students for crowdsourcing food and nutrition data on campus/in canteens. 

3) Academic Researchers: Struggle to get grassroots level, high-frequency, self-reported data and are keen to use this tool for new, granular primary data. We have already signed/are negotiating contracts with the University of Johannesburg, University of Ottawa, National University of Singapore, and Johns Hopkins to name a few. We were also selected by Berkley's CEGA / the World Bank to give a talk on our innovative approach to academic research. 

4) Students: These are the most important, as they are the boots on the ground who use our main mobile phone app to complete data-entry tasks and earn rewards. They are often low-income, have smartphones, are mobile, and keen to learn data entry-skills and field research practices. Our platform gives them a way to do this, while also earning rewards! 

We believe that we can transform the smartphone into a vehicle for performing new forms of task-based data jobs across the Global South. Our platform is a great way to increase capacity building, teach new skills (using custom tutorials we build) and also create new forms of work when youth-unemployment is at an all-time high. Field research builds interpersonal skills, and our platform allows students to both learn and earn in one place. Most importantly, task-based work via smartphone will be a key catalyst in re-thinking the future of work, particularly for young people in marginalized communities. 

Firstly, we have a fully built SaaS platform with three tools (viewable @ www.poketapp.com) that we launched earlier this year. Since then, we have already generated 6-figure revenue in 2021, half of which has been contracts with academic instiutions/universities. The platform has also been translated in three languages and is live in 8 countries, with data contributors using it every day to earn rewards! We are keen to find more engagements in LATAM + the Carribbean with the support of T-Prize. 

We include elements of AI, gamification and crowdsourced mapping to create a totally new community-driven experience for stuents. Below are 4-key differentiators:

1. Organization-centric: We have built a scalable software solution for clients to deploy in the communities they serve. They tell us their tasks/data needs for the community and we retrofit our suite of tools so they can mobilize citizens and deploy them. This saves these organizations and academic researchers (who are not tech companies) time, resources and gives them a new way to generate community-driven insights, while rewarding their community members in the process!

2. Gamification & Rewards: We have created a schema for clients to incentivize end-users (students) for contributing data. This is a score that gets tabulated for each user based on the # of validated tasks they have completed. Then, researchers can choose what rewards students can receive for their contributions (ex. mobile money, gift cards, etc.) A leaderboard also shows who has contributed the most in a group/community. 

3. AI Data Verification Tool: Our proprietary AI is used in a verification tool so crowdsourced data is screened for quality and also ensures that the same data is not duplicated.

4. Optimized for the Developing World: We have spent tireless hours engineering all of these great features around gamifification, rewards, mapping, community-driven insights, etc. for low- cost Android devices in low-bandwidth settings. Our platform is also functional without an internet connection, so data can be collected/entered while offline and uploaded later. 

Our current solution offering consists of a set of mobile applications to collect and verify data and a web-based application to provide custom insights on crowd-sourced data. Out entire technology platform is currently centralized via Amazon AWS services and combines several other services such as Firebase, Twilio, Google Maps, etc. It has also been optimized for low-cost Android devices in settings where bandwidth is low or intermittent. We are also actively investing in building AI for data verification.

Verifying data is, at present, a very manual process. Users of our data verification app make a decision on the quality of collected data by visually inspecting images taken by users of the data collection app, and other attributes like name of the place, phone number, location, etc. 

AI provides an opportunity to create an automatic and robust system of verifying data by removing the need for manual intervention. We can use AI to flag and reject duplicate proposals, flag and reject proposals with poor image quality, flag and reject proposals with incorrect phone numbers, and ultimately make AI the arbitrator of data quality vs. a human - which it mostly is today. 

We have a unique opportunity at hand here because most of the data that will be collected via our platform has not been used to train AI models previously - such as images of informal pharmacies in Bangladesh, face-mask observations in Mexico or self-reported diseases vectors in Pakistan. 

Please see:

1) Our website www.poketapp.com 

2) Below are tutorial videos for all three of the tools based on current features and capabilities. All the functionality you see in these videos have been built and are working today:

a) Crowdsourcing App: https://youtu.be/erv7FmtbbVQ
b) Data Verification App: https://youtu.be/lBKndgDkaRI
c) Desktop Dashboard: https://youtu.be/3UEkKUyWy_c

3) We have already signed paid contracts and the platform is already in-use in several countries and languages - it is accessible in the Google Play Store here:https://play.google.com/store/...

1. Privacy and security concerns: Since our platform enables citizens to self-report many different types of data for many different use-cases, we are constantly adapting our privacy policy (visible on our website) to enable this flexibility while also aligning to best practices for cyber-security and privacy (ex. GDPR). Our forward thinking approach to user privacy has led us to be featured in this article published by FastCompany: https://www.fastcompany.com/90... However, there is always more work to be done!

2. Underrepresented Groups in Data: Given both financial and cultural implications, there are many instances where access to smartphones is not equal across a country, or even a household. Often times, it is women who lack access to smartphone devices, which means that their voices may not be equally reflected in the data produced. Although some of these challenges are outside of our control, we have started to push our partners/clients to cover the cost of basic Android smartphones (~$25) for minority populations to ensure that a sample is truly equitable and reflective of a community/population. This also becomes a very interesting incentive to get minority users/students engaged and empowered, that would otherwise be excluded from these engagements. 

Current #: 250

Serving in 1 Year: 25,000

Serving in 5 Years: 2,500,000 

2025 Impact Goals:

1. 2,500,000 students/citizens have been engaged to complete smartphone-based tasks

2.  500+ NGOs, academic researchers and public sector organizations have easy access to field data via POKET 

3. Youth have received $5,000,000 of payments via rewards in POKET

One of the reasons we decided to launch POKET as a software platform was to maximize scalability. By providing a tool for organizations to empower the communities they work in, we are able to create a "rinse and repeat" model. Often, a few days are spent customizing the tool for a specific project/stakeholder, who then puts it in the hands of communities. Whether it be 10 citizens or 100,000 citizens, our platform is robust enough to handle citizen-generated data at scale, since the marginal cost of adding a user is minimal. All it takes is downloading an app in the Android play store, entering in a project code and the user is ready to enter data and receive rewards. 

We've already started the process of connecting with organizations, mostly via outbound cold-email campaigns. We are also very fortunate to be members of the Trade Commissioner Service of Canada who have been instrumental to facilitating introductions across the world to prospective clients. However, cold-emails and COVID-related networking has truly been a struggle for our team - we are extremely excited by the opportunity of tapping into the TPrize's network of partners who we believe will be very interested in our solution!

Some KPIs we use are:

1) # of organizations/researchers who have deployed our solution in a community

2) # of students/community members/citizens who have used out solution to enter data 

3) amount of $ that has been awarded to participants on a monthly/project basis via this incentivized approach to self-report data

4) amount and nature of data generated across different use-cases 

Abasifreke James (FT, CPO)

Naba Siddiqui (FT, CTO)

Kamil Shafiq (FT, CEO)

Maureen Imeagah (FT, Team Member)

Chike Obusiwe (FT, Team Member)

Kamil (CEO): Bachelor of Business, has led location data monetization efforts for major telecom company in Canada, worked in informal trade and maternal health in Pakistan, has raised impact investment. 

Naba (CTO): Vocal advocate for women in STEM, completed both Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Masters in Computer Engineering, and has held various technical roles such as IBM Watson AI team and RBC Cyber Security Team, AWS certified. Naba was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan and has deep passion for inclusive growth, centred around increasing labour participation and digital empowerment among young girls. 

James: Co-leads the software development, worked as a software developer at several startups shipping innovative products for global MNCs, has been selected as 1/25 founders across Africa to present at NEF hosted by the president of Kenya. James grew up in Nigeria and has deep passion for improving the state of informal merchants and SMEs, who he intimately understands from his upbringing in Awkwa Ibom state. 

Naba and James were both recipients of the Top 30 Under 30 Developer Award for Canada in 2018. Kamil was selected as 1/7 Global Innovators Under 30 by the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) and MIT SOLVE in 2019. The team has also been winners of the General Motors Prize for Innovation, the MBR Initiative for Global Prosperity and Utopia’s Program for Urban Innovation program. Most importantly, the team’s diverse backgrounds and experiences have equipped us with deep understanding of how to build/launch products for the emerging world.

Every single person on our team is a person of colour, either black or brown. Our team is also comprised 40% of women, and our CTO is a woman of colour. We have committed to our next hire being a woman so that 50%+ of our team is female and are keen to hire more folks who are non-binary in the near future. 

The POKET team is working on a major global challenge that is very well aligned with Trinity's mandate for this competition: key infrastructure that will enable a better data-centric feedback loop for the current and next generation of academics and students. There are two key challenges we are facing that would be complete game-changers for our team if we were to win the competition: 

1) Funding that will give us the resources to build additional features of our product faster, and also reach more prospective users of our tools. We are used to working day and night, and will continue to do so, however any resources will go a very long way in helping us get more team members on board to help us achieve our mission. 

2) Given that we are indefinitely confined to our bedrooms, we have been cold-emailing our way to decision-makers. Although we have had some success, it has been challenging without having conferences or traditional platforms where we can network/showcase our innovation. We are extremely excited by the network the Tprize can connect us with, and hope that easier access to partner organizations across the globe will unlock opportunities that we otherwise would never have access to.

3) Expanding more aggressively into LATAM and the Carribbean. Although we already have some exciting opportunities in these regions, we would greatly benefit from warm introductions to these groups.

1) Access to legal resources who can help us negotiate contracts (we struggle to do this in-house) 

2) Introductions to foundations and investors who can offer financial support

3) Introductions to potential clients (NGOs, public sector groups such as the IADB) and universities 

4) Helping localize our tools for the LATAM market

We are keen to connect with NGOs and academic research groups interested in deploying our tools. We have tried unsuccessfully cold-emailing many of these organizations in the past and know that a warm intro via the TPrize network would be incredibly productive for our team! Outside of this, we would also be keen to connect with foundations and investors who may be interested in supporting our work or certain projects being deployed around the world for data-scarce, marginalized communities. As mentioned previously, we are extremely excited by the network TPrize has, such as the IADB, and hope that easier access to partner organizations across the globe will unlock opportunities that we otherwise would never have access to. We're extremely excited by this opportunity. It's a privilege to be in consideration for such an important initiative during a very turbulent time for our world - with your support, POKET can help!