Research Summary

Abstract

Are delivery app users aware of the working conditions of the people who deliver their food? The interviews I had conducted with eleven food delivery riders during unit 2 were the foundation upon which I based my research. 

I have used studio work to explore different media, materials and methods. An early iteration was a screenprinted poster depicting a delivery bag with an interview stapled to it, which I wheatpasted outside a closed down pub. I also made an installation on public space—as opposed to the digital environment of food delivery apps—with materials familiar to the delivery experience. The interviews were printed on thermal paper and stapled to kraft paper bags, which featured screenprinted highlights from the interviews. I was able to observe people passing by and interacting with it.

To explore my topic in more depth I created a risographed zine featuring the interviews alongside a glossary created specifically from my research. This allowed me to position them in a broader context including concepts like gig economy and platform capitalism. Finally, both the interviews and glossary entries were connected to relevant bibliographic quotes.

The outcomes of this research are relevant to my audience—the users—who gets to decide which app they’ll use, or even bypass apps altogether and order directly from restaurants. Delivery riders might find useful information and workers in general may also find the enquiry important since the questions raised, although stemmed from research about riders, are faced by people across many industries.

Context

Never having worked as a delivery rider only allows me to look at their realities from the outside. Weber’s (2025) experience as a rider on the other hand, underpins his practice. In his exhibition the multi-disciplinary Brazilian artist recontextualises the tools of the job from the streets to the gallery. His tools become medium, which allows the audience to contemplate these objects and images from the life of the artist and reflect on his (delivery) work from a different perspective. The artist goes beyond (the act of delivery) and presents snippets of his life—like razors, pictures of haircuts and tents from favela parties—that act as a window to the community he comes from. Weber’s repurpose of materials has inspired me to create an installation using paper bags and receipts as media. It is a simple yet powerful way to allude to the topic. Photos of food orders from the perspective of the rider, and worn-out backpacks portray a reality that inverts the branding strategies of delivery companies by foregrounding the “real real” at the expense of which “[t]he branded, neoliberal unreal real is always constructed” (Grant, Vodeb, 2023, p.49).

The subject of branding intersects in essential ways with the platformisation phenomenon. There is the branding of platforms that communicates convenience as the key value of delivery apps, and the branding in platforms that influences the users’ decision-making process between countless restaurants and grocery stores. Branding and platformisation are therefore entangled. It’s impossible — or insufficinent — to analyse one without the other. The name gig for instance comes from the kind of work done by comedians, musicians and other artists, so its use to define the economic system based on freelance jobs romanticises precarious realities. By ignoring this and only praising the benefits of flexible jobs contributes to “aestheticising the concealment of social and political conflict.” (Grant, Vodeb, 2023, p. 49)

Della Torre (2023) used her prior volunteer work and the resulting interactions as the foundation for her research. Although I too built my research around conversations from an outside perspective, the two contexts were very different. Most of my interviews seemed superficial compared to Della Torre’s, which made me see my source material from a different angle and start looing for subtext. The fact that most of my interviews were relatively short was a statement in itself: delivery riders can’t afford to spend time talking to strangers instead of picking up and delivering orders. Additionally, a lot can be said with very few words, like in my shortest conversation for instance, when the Brazilian rider only had time to say that “Its hard for the illegals” before riding away.

Conversations from Calais inspired me to make a street poster for one of my iterations as way to “take over public space and refuse to let the refugee narrative be dominated by mainstream media and politicians who use the same scapegoating strategies they’ve been using for years.” (Della Torre, 2023, p. 10)

Like the paperless office propaganda (Ludovico, 2025, p. 26) from the 80s and 90s that advocated for the replacement of all forms of paper for their digital counterparts, platformisation is sold as the solution for most of life’s inconveniences. Software is supposedly capable of solving most problems better than the average person, but behind every algorithm there are decisions made by humans that dictate what (or whose) problems are foregrounded. 

Each media has its own characteristics. While digital media allows for instant and widespread distribution, print objects trigger visual memory. A physical object like a zine may act as a continuous reminder of what it represents just by seating on a shelf, its cover being glanced upon occasionally. Apps and websites on the other hand exist alongside an virtually infinite ecosystem of other apps and sites, which makes them more forgettable. Visual memory being triggered is a particularly interesting prospect for food ordering since its an activity performed from home. Additionally, since my intention during projection 2 was to to provide a deeper look at my research it made sense to make use of print media’s readability that enables sustained interest for its content.

Ludovico argues for a the sophistication of the bibliography compared to hyperlinks (Ludovico, 2025, p. 131). The idea of a thoughtful compilation of references was the inspiration behind my chosen bibliographic method—adding a visual element, either book cover or exhibition photo, and intertwining the full references with the main text instead of a list of references at the end—which I use on the In Convenience zine and in this research summary.

I am not advocating for one medium over the other. There will be an online version of the zine, but in the future this project might benefit from a proper translation to the digital environment, because a new medium also prompts a new projection, perhaps a different audience. One possible exploration would be a guide for new riders based on my interviews and research, open for contributions, being continuously expanded and updated.

Norman (2008) uses the glossary’s alphabetical nature to structure the book, offer a selection of ideas, and both as a way to frame the subject as well as to articulate the author’s position. This was my inspiration to use this method to present a deeper version of my research.

I am self-publishing my work in a 100-copy edition. These will be freely distributed. I’ve visited the bookshop Housman’s. They have agreed to display my publication on the bookshop. I chose them because we share a similar ethos which means the zine would sit alongside other books on similar topics. One of the bookshelves was dedictated to worker’s struggle. To publish is to become part of a network, the bookshop being one of its nodes. Potentially every publication about workers’ struggle—one of Housman’s categories—generate new nodes since their authors and publishers have done intersecting research. 

My own reference list offers further networing possibilities. I have sent my projection 1 work to Weber (2025) at the end of last term, and plan on contact other authors and editors like Della Torre (2023) and Graham, Shaw (2017). Although time limitations and lack of formal training prevented me from conduction proper ethnographic research, I consider all the people I reached out to, including the riders I interviewed and the IWGB union which I contacted, part of a system of dissident voices in the broader gig-economy and platform capitalism contexts.

The zine will be distributed for free and count on voluntary contributions so it reaches a wider audience. Because cost of labour is a central theme in my research, the colophon shows the printing costs with no fee for research, writing and design. This hints at the free labour of delivery riders, also alluded to on the price tag on the back cover. Similarly, the suggested price is close to what a delivery rider usually gets paid for one order.

Projected Contribution

The final outcome of the project In Convenience borrows from three distinctive epistemologies: the interview, the glossary and the bibliography.

The interviews produced personal, first-hand knowledge. Participants spoke about their own experience and views on food delivery. This method seemed an appropriate starting point into the world of food delivery riders. While each account was unique, there were common threads connecting them all. 

Usually glossaries are used to support a main text that contains concepts that might be unfamiliar to readers. They present definitions that project credibility and neutrality. On my research however there are no such presumptions. Rather than being an accessory, my glossary sits alongside the interviews and presents connected thoughts rather than definitions of words that came directly from the text. It is an expansion rather than an explanation.

Similarly, instead of merely reinforcing arguments made by the author, the In Convenience zine gives bibliographic quotes the same importance as both the interviews and the glossary, each reference taking a full spread.

I plan to continue using the wide range of tools, methods and media available within graphic communication design, particularly publications—in the broadest sense, not necessarily bound to print—and the networks that stem from the act of publishing to contribute to discourse and action on social issues including, but no restricted to, labour and workers’ struggle.