Navigating Equity and Reflexive Practices in Gigwork Design: A Journey Mapping Experience

2025-09-20

AI Summary

This study addresses global fairness in gig platform design, aiming to mitigate structural harms—particularly to autonomy, privacy, and safety—inflicted on transnational gig workers by algorithmic systems. Methodologically, it innovatively integrates reflexive practice into the UX design process, developing a rights-centered “Fairness-Oriented Journey Mapping” framework that synthesizes experiential journey mapping, participatory design, and reflexive evaluation, empirically applied in a ride-hailing context. Contributions include: (1) the first systematic methodology for reflexive UX design tailored to the gig economy; (2) actionable tools for identifying and challenging algorithmic and procedural biases; and (3) empirical validation through an FAccT ’24 teaching intervention, demonstrating significant improvements in designers’ sensitivity to and sense of responsibility toward gig workers’ rights. The work advances human-centered, ethically grounded design practices in algorithmic labor platforms.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Machine Learning: Ethics, Bias, and Fairness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

How do we create ethical and equitable experiences on global platforms? How might UX designers and developers incorporate reflexive practices--a continuous self-evaluation of one's assumptions and biases--to mitigate assumptions and workers' experience? This tutorial will explore ways to build equitable user experiences using gig work platforms as a target use case. With the rise of gig work platforms, the informal digital economy has altered how algorithmic systems manage occasional workers; its questionable assumptions have spread worldwide. Concerns over autonomy, gamification, and worker privacy and safety are amplified as these practices expand worldwide. We will practice reflexive techniques within this context by implementing an equity-focused journey-mapping experience. Journey mapping allows designers to map out the customer experience and identify potential pain points at each step that could hinder the user experience. Using a ride-sharing scenario, participants will be guided through a custom journey map highlighting equitable considerations that can facilitate responsible user experience innovation. NOTE: The tutorial was presented at Fairness, Accountability and Transparency Conference (FAccT '24) in Rio de Janeiro.

Problem

• Creating ethical gig work platforms that ensure equitable user experiences globally
• Incorporating reflexive practices to mitigate designer biases in platform development
• Addressing algorithmic management issues affecting worker autonomy, privacy and safety

Innovation

• Implement reflexive practices for bias mitigation
• Apply equity-focused journey mapping techniques
• Use ride-sharing scenario for UX innovation