The Hexadecimal Factory - Product and Service Design Work in the Digital Economy

This article explores digital product and service production. Digital production is a sizeable part of the global economy and growing area of employment. People working in the digital economy are employed in many sectors including e-commerce. Their roles are diverse, working conditions varied and in most cases their occupation blends traditional skills such as management with new ones such as software development. This article focuses on creative workers. Working closely with developers, their tasks span envisioning, designing, developing, delivering and maintaining digital deliverables. Preparatory studies were carried out to understand this work and then to examine the felt nature of creative work in often intense, agile working conditions. Agile was found to have both positive and negative effects on wellbeing. A four-week diary study was then conducted to explore this topic in more detail. The findings helped define how the creative work of designers is integrated within production, the kind of knowledge employed in collaborative, multidisciplinary work and the occupational strains they encounter. These findings are discussed and underpin the article’s climatic conclusion on evolving Wilcock’s framework for occupational health [9] to account for the specific characteristics of creative labour in the current period.