Visões para economia de plataforma: criando futuros com design especulativo

Abstract

This dissertation presents a critical and speculative investigation into the futures of work within the platform economy, focusing on the everyday experiences of app-based delivery workers in the city of São Paulo. Using the Future Scouting method, combined with speculative design and the empirical analysis of over 2,900 videos produced by delivery workers on YouTube, the study identifies emerging signals and recurring structures that define the relationship between technology, labor, and autonomy. Five core drivers are mapped (algorithmic responsivity, interface logic as a cognitive model, hybridization of labor and performance, empirical validation as a criterion of authority, and reverse engineering as a navigation practice) which serve as the foundation for the construction of textual speculative scenarios. These scenarios challenge dominant narratives of innovation, expose hidden contradictions, and explore possible, probable, desirable, and implausible futures. Methodologically, the work contributes by proposing an original application of speculative design grounded in popular knowledgeproduction practices. Theoretically, it shifts the analytical focus from platforms themselves to the everyday forms of agency built at the margins of institutional structures. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that imagining futures is also a way of reorganizing the present, and that delivery workers, though excluded from formal innovation cycles, act as pragmatic analysts, narrative creators, and silent protagonists of the ongoing digital transformation