Revisiting Worker-Centered Design: Tensions, Blind Spots, and Action Spaces

Abstract

Worker-Centered Design (WCD) has gained prominence over the past decade, offering researchers and practitioners ways to engage worker agency and support collective actions for workers. Yet few studies have systematically revisited WCD itself, examining its implementations, challenges, and practical impact. Through a four-lens analytical framework that examines multiple facets of WCD within food delivery industry, we identify critical tensions and blind spots from a Multi-Laborer System perspective. Our analysis reveals conflicts across labor chains, distorted implementations of WCD, designers' sometimes limited political-economic understanding, and workers as active agents of change. These insights further inform a Diagnostic-Generative pathway that helps to address recurring risks, including labor conflicts and institutional reframing, while cultivating designers' policy and economic imagination. Following the design criticism tradition, and through a four-lens reflexive analysis, this study expands the action space for WCD and strengthens its relevance to real-world practice.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: Paradigm and Outcomes of Worker-Centered Design -- We summarized worker-centered research in HCI and design, mapping its paradigms and outcomes onto the stages of a typical design process. The figure illustrates how different methods and contributions align with each stage: in the DISCOVER phase, three primary approaches are employed -- empathy, participation, and speculation; in the DEFINE phase, studies generate interpretations of workers' needs at multiple levels; in the solution phase, research DEVELOP design opportunities and DELIVER prototypes and real products.
• Figure 2: Multi-Laborer System -- This diagram conceptualizes the food delivery industry as a Multi-Laborer System, supported by various groups of workers involved throughout the production-to-consumption chain, operating under employment arrangements ranging from part-time (PT) to full-time (FT). The purple line highlights the "Labor Chain". At the center of the system is the platform, which not only coordinates couriers but also shapes the operations of restaurants, warehouses, and upstream food processing. Peripheral actors -- including authorities, capital investors, and public media -- interact with the platform, collectively influencing labor relations and the broader industry landscape.
• Figure 3: A Diagnostic–Generative Pathway -- Based on our analysis of Multi-Laborer Systems, we propose a Diagnostic–Generative Pathway for design in relation to workers. This figure illustrates how the Pathway can be applied within the double diamond model. The red diagnostic path spans the top of the diagram, starting with "Conflict of Labor" above the first diamond and ending with "institutional reframing" above the second. The blue generative path runs along the bottom, beginning with "Sense and Imagination of Economy" and ending with "Sense and Imagination of Policy" below the second.
• Figure 4: A Design Probe: This figure shows a prototype of a worker-centered, crowdsourced platform for food couriers. The platform integrates open environmental data (e.g., weather, drinking water points, fountains, malls; left) and enables couriers to tag meaningful locations and share experiences (middle and right). Designed as a technology probe, it aims to surface how couriers creatively repurpose urban spaces and develop community practices around them.
• Figure 5: Observation on a McDonald Shop: This set of photos documents changes in delivery service touchpoints over three years at the same McDonald’s in a European capital. Set A shows the typical interaction: couriers wait at the entrance, the kitchen prepares meals, staff package them, and the handoff occurs through verbal order confirmation. Set B highlights changes driven by digital technologies. As delivery volume grew, couriers increasingly entered the restaurant, overlapping with dine-in customers. Then, the restaurant created a dedicated pickup corridor on the left side, with a dashboard displaying order status, enabling contactless retrieval.