Phase 2: Exploratory Research
Team 16: Amrita Khoshoo, Diana Minji Chun, Hannah Koenig, Shambhavi Deshpande
This post chronicles our team’s progress as it happens for the second phase of our Interaction Design Studio 2 Project, taught by Peter Scupelli in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design. You can find the full process publication here.
Thursday 1/23: Phase 2 Kick-off
Team 16 met on Thursday to regroup from our Phase 1 presentations, process the feedback we received, and determine our next steps for beginning Phase 2 exploratory research.
We started by trying to answer a question we got after our territory map presentation: what assumptions or expectations do you have about what you will discover during research? This became a long-form and valuable discussion, as it generated a series of more detailed research questions, topics, and ideas.
Highlights from the conversation included:
- Do contingent workers take on this kind of work because of its potential benefits, like flexibility or autonomy, or do they do these jobs because they don’t have other options? Do contingent workers want more traditional job arrangements, or do they deliberately seek out this approach to earning a living?
- How much agency do they feel they have with their employer? How do changing company policies affect them (drive time caps, earning structure, etc)?
- For contingent workers with multiple jobs, including full-time jobs, how important is their job to their identity or sense of self?
- Do employers embrace contingent work arrangements for the bottom line? How do they approach the human aspects of contingent work?
- Do contingent workers want more traditional job arrangements or do they seek out a different way of earning a living? What about benefits — is it true that contingent work yields fewer and less desirable benefits than traditional full-time jobs?
- How do demographics factor into contingent work? Are younger generations quicker to embrace contingent work? Are stable career trajectories undesirable to younger generations?
- Are there differences in attitudes and experiences surrounding contingent work and automation between blue-collar and white-collar industries? What about the differences between low-paying and high-paying contingent jobs?
Next, based on our earlier brainstorming about potential organizations, populations, and individuals, we began organizing our ideas into more granular detail.
OWe plan to use this spreadsheet to track our research ideas and the status of outreach to various organizations and individuals. We also made a tab with secondary research and began listing topics and resources to focus on over the weekend.
Our secondary research topics include:
- worker type classifications and terminology
- regulations and labor laws
- economic theory
- labor history and case studies
- statistics about the U.S. economy and Pittsburgh labor market
- future of work
We agreed to dive deep into our next round of secondary research and continue to populate our list of organizations and individuals so that we can begin outreach on Monday.
Monday 1/27:
Booth Roleplay Activity
We did a fun (and funny!) activity in class. It involved a roleplay of characters from our CollabU and ConflictU modules. Hannah was Grant, Amrita was Freda, and Diana was Kirk. I was the observer!
Our team enjoyed the process and agreed on the next steps in the Booth situation. Everyone accommodated, compromised, and collaborated as and when needed. Practicing a roleplay activity helped our team learn communication since it was a safe, fun situation with nothing at stake. There were no conflicts!
Secondary research
Over the weekend, each of us looked at specific topics in our territory map and covered a vast area with our collective efforts! We got together on Monday and shared the findings, and further broadened the vision of this project. Some of the key points from our findings were:
- The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements — which can be described as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers — rose from 10.7 percent in February 2005 to 15.8 percent in late 2015.
- 64% of Americans approve of labor unions in 2018, which shows a rise over the past three years and is distributed across political parties. This is quite likely linked to a strong economy, given that union approval is seen to have dropped during economic downturns such as in 2008.
- The 4th Industrial Revolution is all about automation. Challenges for governments in this phase will be labor displacement and labor reskilling. With more and more work located away from designated workplaces, regulatory challenges could arise with “invisible” and geographically dispersed work through online and subcontracting arrangements. How to regulate employment, identify employers, collect taxes, support social protections like pensions?
- Perhaps capitalism is the dominant economic force without an alternative economic model as a competitor, and the true competition for the global economy’s future is between two different types of capitalism, exemplified by the US (liberal capitalism) and China (political capitalism), which have two different ways of structuring political and economic power in a society. (Source: Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020)
- Pittsburgh’s labor statistics are available on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website with data on employment concerning industries, and its trends over time.
- Automation! Several authors have spoken about the relationship of AI with human jobs. Some are of the view that AI is taking over jobs (The Future of Work), while some maintain that AI itself cannot function without humans (Gray, Suri, 2019, Ghost Work, Ch. 1).
- We discussed that the challenges of upskilling and reskilling could be imminent for many individuals, businesses and governments. The dignity, well-being, and self-fulfillment of individuals, as well as the prosperity of society, could depend on it. Within this context, impactful public policies for workers’ inclusiveness are important. In this vein, the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, including workers, companies, public authorities, education institutions, training providers and social partners can be crucial. (Source: Deloitte Insights — Expected skills needs for the future of work)
We have a lot of findings to share! We are planning to synthesize them further and communicate this knowledge in a nutshell in the upcoming presentation.
Tue 1/28:
We began mapping out a research protocol with the help of a “handsome” research protocol template! Thanks, Hajira for sharing it in the research methods class.
Wed 1/29:
Hannah took the lead on adapting this research protocol template to our context and we added more dimensions to it in class. We got a lot of perspective from Peter and Hajira and more resources on our research plan!
Thu 1/30:
We got together to plan our field visit to the Amazon Fulfillment Center at Etna, Ohio — basic things like where to pick up the rental car, where to meet the next morning, and critical things like how best to take notes (since we were not allowed to take photos), what questions to ask, and snacks!
Fri 1/31: Factory visit day!
We hit the road around 5.30 AM for a 3-hr one-way trip! Many thanks to Diana for driving on the way down to Etna and Amrita driving on the way back to Pittsburgh!
Our tour was scheduled at 9 AM to the Amazon Fulfillment Center at Etna, Ohio today. We were welcomed by Amanda from the PR department of this center. The center has scheduled tours every weekday at 9 AM and 1:30 PM. Participants of these tours are usually new associates who are about to join the warehouse and school children. We were not allowed to take photos or record anything, so we went analog and sketched, took notes, captured everything we could!
The fulfillment center spanned a huge area with designated areas for stowing, picking, packing, and shipping items. Although a warehouse, they had taken care to brighten up the place with holiday greetings, and put up walls of fame also to motivate employees.
All the conveyor belts made a lot of noise and we were given headphones so that we could listen to Amanda (the tour guide) speak as she walked four feet ahead!
We did get to take this lovely picture in their designated photo area! This tour was an amazing experience for all of us, and we could see the future of work up and running in the present.
Amazon has 110 warehouses in North America, and we found during our visit to Etna that about 40 of those are equipped with the Amnesty robots, with up to 200 robots in one center. If you would like to know more, Amazon has put up quite a few videos of the warehouses on their media channels, such as this:
We are now working on compiling the observations and drawing insights so as to move forward with our research question. Stay tuned!
