Crowdsourcing The Image Search

A couple of years ago (probably five to six years) I was reading an article and came across an image. The image was very interesting and caught my attention immediately. It was an original picture of group of people who were waiting in a queue to get to the sales counter. They had self organised themselves in a such way so that the the sales counter was visible each and every person in the group. I have made rough sketch of the original image(top view). I am bad at creative pursuits, so bear with me and here is the image.

I have sketched the table and chair near the counter, people standing in queue near the sales counter. Circle represent the head of the person standing and the shape around circle represents shoulders as visible from the top view. If you were able figure these out from the image on your own, either you are very smart or I am getting better at sketching :P

Back to our interesting article. The article that I had read was about how crowds can self organise themselves for the optimum outcome when there is minimum trust between the participating individuals. Though I was aware of the concept, the image put many things in perspective. It was a simple and concise illustration of the concept. Both the image and the concept stuck in my mind.

After a couple of months I was trying to explain this concept to a friend and tried searching for the image and article. I was not able to find it. I tried my chrome history, google search, google image reverse search et al but without any luck.

I think five to six years must have passed since that day. Yesterday I had to give the same reference to somebody in my office when explaining the product that we are working on (Learning Paths). I tried searching for it again hoping that search and algorithms have improved and hence I might get lucky. But Alas, no luck again.

So I thought of crowdsourcing the Image Search. Hence this post. I think I have given enough details so that anybody interested can join me in my search. It would be awesome if we can find out that article and the image. If you think you can add any details/insights that can help me find the image, do leave a comment. If you have made it till here and think it is worth finding out about the image but do-not have any insights, do clap and share the post, so that more people can join our search.

The maximum you can clap is 50 times. Just click and drag for clapping multiple times.

Note : The product that we are building should make sure that I and you don’t miss such important insights but that is the material for another blog :)