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Gig Economy platforms such as Uber, Ola, Zomato among others have proliferated across urban centres of the world and transformed the ways in which people access mobility, food, care, and other services necessary for daily life. These platforms have primarily been studied from a (digital) labour perspective to understand how the rise of “gig work” or app-based piecework has transformed labour participation and the conditions of daily work for thousands across the globe. Gig work and broadly platform work have been hailed as the ‘Future of Work’ as well. This dissertation draws on four years of ethnographic research on platform participation across India, the UK, and the US to offer the first theorization of ‘platform-living’ beyond the conception of platform work. Responding to the predominantly economistic focus on platforms as markets, the dissertation expands what constitutes as ‘matters of concern’ to the questions of social practice, urban infrastructural politics as well as the investigation of moral enactments within the platform society. The dissertation’s conceptual direction derives from the understanding that an exclusive focus on platforms qua markets misses out the ways in which social networks, builtenvironment, urban ecologies as well as local political constellations shape the materialization of platforms in local contexts. In that sense, there are multiple platform economies and they are constantly being worlded by the contexts that they unfold in. To that end, as the dissertation shows, it is imperative to understand platforms as social, material and ethical objects, not exclusively in terms of how they shape the daily work of ridehailing drivers and food delivery workers but rather by looking at the ways in which they get inserted in the larger landscape of everyday life. The dissertation argues that the emplaced notion of ‘platform-living’ inspires a generative and tactical approach to platform politics and regulation going forward.

Freelancing platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr, have become a viable source of work for millions of freelancers worldwide. However, these gig economy systems are not typically designed in ways that centre workers’ preferences and wellbeing. In this paper, we describe the development and evaluation of ‘Freelance Grow,’ a design fiction portraying a freelancing platform that prioritises freelancers’ professional development and peer support. The design fiction was informed by a systematic literature assessment, using recommendations from twenty-six sources for improving online freelancers’ experiences. We then used the design fiction in focus groups with 23 online freelancers to investigate their views on the ideas suggested in our design fiction. Based upon a thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts, we present three opportunities and considerations for designing systems that further enable freelancers’ work autonomy, entrepreneurial development, and peer support. Ultimately, we contribute an expanded understanding of design approaches to support online freelancers in the gig economy.

Excessive sedentariness can impair workers' health and productivity. The move to working from home as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic eliminated many workday opportunities for physical activity. This, coupled with a blurring of boundaries between work and non-work periods, put many at risk of overwork and musculoskeletal issues. We examined how the sudden transition to working from home influenced people's ability to take physically active work breaks. We found that the absence of social norms associated with the presence of colleagues in the work environment left workers uncertain about whether and when it is appropriate to take breaks. The pressure to demonstrate productivity while working asynchronously led to increased sedentariness and decreased break-taking. We propose that online tools that promote flexible social norms around break-taking could empower remote workers to incorporate regular physical activity into their days, without compromising the beneficial aspects of asynchronous working.