The “Runner” Ups
Stories & Experiences of informal hyper-local logistics workers.
Note: The learnings and observations are from the world pre-covid.
Today, Informal Employment in the Indian digital platform economy is shaping lives and behavior.
Empathizing blue collared worker’s perspectives and Introspecting technology’s impact on society is pivotal while designing a responsible platform.
Akash Chandan designer & researcher. Shares deeper insights from the field, further exploring the broader themes of nature of work, identity, ethics, and more.
Informal platform economy and its employment are rapidly creating opportunities for individuals across the cities of the country.
The contemporary state of the intracity logistics or hyperlocal delivery employment is being shaped as we speak.
While numerous conversations are happening around its legality and social welfare, it’s high time that as designers we try to understand the nature of work, dignity & quality of life, and its unavoidable socio-economic aspects around the gig economy.
This is an attempt to portray these people’s perspectives, narrate their stories, experiences, and beliefs, while I try to express their hopes, dreams, and aspirations towards the future.
Drawing from the in-depth qualitative research abstracting from more than a thousand conversations with employees of different platforms, such as cab-hailing, rental bikes, bike-taxies, food & grocery delivery, intra-city logistics & on-demand service providers.
With this case study, I’ve witnessed there is a constant fluid tussle between the employer and an employee regarding wage, opportunity, expectations, and honesty, and more…
If you zoom out and look at it, A beautiful theoretical narrative of meaning-making arises.
Humans, migrated in an urban context trying to survive by making sense of this complicated network of data & algorithms by sharing stories and experiences by teaching each other. Very similar to the early humans trying to make sense of abstract things with limited knowledge.
On the other side, state-of-the-art algorithms trying to perfect their sense of human behavior with an enormous amount of connected data points. Trying to quantify the most humane emotions like motivations, aspirations, fear, etc.,
There is a game at play. Where one team is building up complicated levels as the other is constantly trying to find loopholes to break the system. The outcome is common, Survival.
The existing symbiotic relationship between algorithms & humans is as good as it gets in our society.
My work has been about collecting life histories to decoding emotions & experiences while presenting unbiased perspectives to stakeholders in a room discussing a profitable economy around this emerging ambiguous eco-system of labor.
I share these under-represented perspectives of people who literally “RUN” the company on the ground yet finish the race as runner-ups.
The “Runner” Ups: Stories & Experiences of informal hyper-local logistics.
