A talk of interest to the COR community…
Dr. Jacki O’Neill
Researcher
Microsoft Research, India
Date: Friday, March 10, 2017
Talk: 2:00 PM
Location: 6011 Donald Bren Hall
Refreshments: 3:15 PM, to be served in the 5th floor lobby.
Talk Title: Uberization and the Future of Work
ABSTRACT:
Recent changes in the world of work, such as the proliferation of crowdwork and so-called peer economy apps, have enabled new models of on demand labour. The emergence of such apps, not to mention the popularity of Uber, have led some to proclaim that Uberization is the future of work. Uberization is a popular term loosely used to encompass one or more of three workplace trends: 1) taskification, where work is performed as a series of individual tasks, often farmed out to 2) a non-contracted workforce, sometimes rather euphemistically called micro-entrepreneurs or partners, who work in 3) a technologically-mediated labour market (typically a third party platform provider), which manages the work and workforce algorithmically. In this presentation I will use my years of studying both traditional and platform-based workplaces to examine this vision of the future of work from the perspective of the workers in these labour markets. Using ethnographic data, I will ask what’s it like to work in these new digital economies? What are the implications for independence, flexibility, and motivation and job satisfaction? What is it like when ones workplace is, at least in part, a third party platform which delegates management to algorithms? What are the implications for coordination work and worker evaluation? Probing current practice enables us to explore opportunities to design a future of work which supports and enhances worker’s practice, producing better outcomes not just for the workers, but also for customers and platform providers
BIO:
Dr Jacki O’Neill is an experienced Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher. She uses ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography to inspire the design of innovative technologies, which aim to be both useful and usable since they take into account users situated practices. She joined the Technologies for Emerging Markets (TEM) area at Microsoft Research India in Jan 2014. She was previously a Principal Scientist and Ethnography Champion for Xerox’s Innovation Group, based at Xerox Research Centre Europe. She is passionate about the design of technologies which capitalize on people’s skills and capabilities, whether at work, at home, for health, education or play.
Her current research interests span the future or work, digital currencies and financial inclusion, transportation and accessibility. Her background in designing workplace technologies to support and enhance work practices has, in the last 5 years, led to investigation of new technologically-mediated workplaces, from crowdwork platforms to so-called ‘peer economy’ applications (Uber, Ola, etc.). Opportunities for intervention come at the platform-level (designing for workers’ situated practice, capitalizing on local knowledge, etc.), at the market level (e.g. designing workable peer-to-peer platforms for a true peer economy, i.e. designing out the digital middleman), and at the career level (supporting career development, mobility and so on). The digital currency research examines mobile money and its relation (or otherwise) to financial inclusion. She is in the process of designing and building and app to build auto-rickshaw drivers financial capability.
She has more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, 10 patents and 8 patents pending and has served on the Program Committees of conferences such as CHI, CSCW, Co-op, Group, ECSCW, ICTd and India HCI for many years. She is Paper Chair of Interact 2017.