Ask HN: What is the term for faking automation by using human labor? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the term for faking automation by using human labor?

8 pointshotpockets15 comments

Like early in a startup you fake automation by really using human power. Its supposed to look automated but there is a human behind the scenes doing it. I swear there is a term for this that I can't think of. Best I can think of is meatgearing.

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Mechanical Turk: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk

I mean like, you have a 3 person startup and one of you is running around doing work that your customers assume must be already automated.

"doing thinks that don't scale"?

Yes, doing things that don't scale or mechanical turking. I couldn't imagine what else you mean.

Lean Startup had some great stories about beating the pavement and providing services by hand. Perhaps there's some corresponding jargon to be had in there.

I'm very certain the phrase you're looking for is "wizard of oz". That's what Eric Ries called these types of MVPs in The Lean Startup.

Here's a link: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-Wizard-o...

'Definition of Wizard of Oz testing in Eric Ries' book "The Lean Startup": "where customers believe they are interacting with the actual product, but behind the scenes human beings are doing the work"'

More generally, it's a term of art in HCI research, going back to J. F. Kelley in the early 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment

I think a lot of small companies does this in the beginning if the task is hard to implement and you have other critical tasks to finish first. I never knew it had a term, fun to know "Mechanical Turk"

"Manual automation" could be another term :)

Pretty sure one term for it is "concierge MVP" where you make it look like a legit automated service, but in-fact behind the scenes it's all human labour.

There are two similar but different methods.

Concierge Test is used to understand the mechanics, not user demand. Wizard of Oz (aka Mechanical Turk) is used to evaluate hypotheses.

The more detail in the post by Tristan Kromer below.

https://grasshopperherder.com/concierge-vs-wizard-of-oz-test...

In addition to mechanical turk, there's also the phrase "Fake it till you make it" which is somewhat appropriate (the connotation is more like "pretend to be a success").

Work?

Ha! I tried editing my text to be clearer what I'm referring to.

Unicorn.

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