The thesis purpose is to gather recommendations to adapt participatory design to elderly users, through the involvement of an association of elderly museum volunteers. The outcome is the result of a participatory process that included forms, interviews, cultural probes, and workshops where the volunteers and designer collaborated tightly to explore volunteers’ needs and find solutions to address them. This process led to the design of a platform that empowers volunteers' work and recognizes its value. The platform includes sections managed by the volunteers to archive information about the museum pieces, share organized activities, and receive feedback from visitors to improve their work.

This paper introduces the topic of Cohousing as a solution to the chronic housing crisis and examines how it can be supported by digital platforms, and what form they should take. The theoretical concept of platforms and infrastructure is examined in general and specifically for communities along with other co-operative practices. The methodology of Research through Design (RtD) paired with recognised design methods of interviews, surveys and participatory design including workshops and co-design, employing a design process blending ideation and prototyping with each of these methods. The resulting design is a platform serving the dual functionality of marketing the Cohousing practice to wider society coupled with aggregating the infrastructural and communication needs of a cohousing group. The design works to support a highly interpersonal community-based activity through the face-to-face interaction of groups and demonstrates how the studies of platforms and infrastructure combined with research through design can support such practices.

The formation of distinctive Internet cultures, accompanied by the increasing importance of digital mediations for popular culture consumption, has culminated in both popular and academic discussions around the idea of Internet-based music scenes or communities as a cultural phenomenon, referred to as “Internet genres” or “Internet music.” This dissertation presents a comprehensive framework for and definition of Internet music through ethnographic and textual analyses of three separate scenes: vaporwave, hyperpop, and phonk. It interrogates issues of cultural borrowing and hybridity within these Internet music scenes, and how representations of racial, gender, sexual, and national identity are negotiated by both producers and fans. It also explores how the dynamics of the online platforms through which these scenes manifest (including, but not limited to their tendency toward anonymity, low barrier to entry for producers, and blurred lines between producers/consumers) shape these scenes, including how the algorithm-driven organization of these scenes and the influence of meme cultures impact how different identities and cultures are portrayed through these musics. Ultimately, this project interrogates how social and cultural identities and differences come to be constructed and articulated in online environments, and how in a “post-Internet” age, individuals are increasingly using popular media to make sense of their relationships with digital technologies. / Media & Communication

This sandwich thesis initiates a dialogue to examine connections and departures between new media studies, platform studies, critical digital race studies, critical disability studies, and feminist data studies. The manuscript presents four research papers that traverse issues regarding ableist platform governance, algorithmic visibility, and crip/neuroqueer digital cultural production. My theorizing of crip data seeks to interrupt hegemonic Western and Eurocentric conceptualizations of what is (not) valued and who (does not) holds power within platform spaces. Moreover, an intersectional focus on disability and race interrogates the ways technoableism (Shew, 2020) and algorithmic oppression (Noble, 2018) collectively animate the creation, development, and use of platforms and other new media technologies. I introduce crip data studies as an interdisciplinary academic and activist theoretical framework that counters the dominance of Western and Eurocentric ideologies that inform a digital platform’s algorithmic infrastructure, governance, and cultural production. I utilize the sandwich thesis model to examine the ways crip data can support critical/cultural investigations about platforms, power, disability, race, and culture through various case studies. In Chapter 1, I assess the relationship between race, disability, and bias in platform content moderation. Chapter 2 proposes neuroqueer practices for new media production and disability engagement that do not reproduce techno-solutionist measures in mediating neuroqueer self-expression and digital relationality. Chapters 3 and 4 communicate the generative departures of crip and neuroqueer platform use as a mode of hosting cultural production. In sum, this thesis engages with enmeshed inquiries regarding disability, race, and ideological value to respond to the following provocation: Is another platform– one beyond ableist, racist, and colonial bias– possible? / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis introduces crip data studies as a theoretical practice that challenges how dominant Western, Eurocentric conceptualizations of disability and race inform governance and cultural production on digital social platforms. I invoke crip, a subversive reclamation that reframes disability as a political and cultural identity, to disrupt the erasure and devaluation of disability within digital platforms. Through theorizing crip data, I reconfigure the disabled user and creator to investigate the significance of technological bias in shaping platform economies, politics, and creative engagement. The thesis project has two goals. First, crip data reveals how offline biases animate a platform’s algorithmic infrastructure and user interactions. Crip data also amplifies the creative, strategic practices shaping digital disability cultural production on social sharing and content creation platforms. In doing so, the manuscript demonstrates how crip data offers potentialities for intersectional readings beyond platformed mediations of ableism, racism, and coloniality.

This Master's degree thesis deals with a specific area of creative industries: development of mobile applications. The aim is to identify and understand the work routines of Czech iOS developers while considering the importance of design as one of the benchmarks of mobile application quality on the Apple App Store. I mainly focus on mapping work routines of selected developers and their thinking about design in the context of Apple devices and iOS platform, assuming that Apple establishes a high standard of visual and functional qualities. I am addressing an issue of application usability not only in terms of design of the user interface, but also its functioning and more aspects of application development within the ecosystem of Czech mobile app industry. The theoretical part of my thesis subjectively describes fundamental concepts from the mobile app development field and theories related to the topic. Empirical part of the study is based on qualitative interviews with 9 Czech mobile app developers and following thematic analysis. This study can serve as an interesting resource of understanding of the work of Czech mobile app developers, how they think about design and Apple as a platform or as a solid foundation for further quantitative investigation to confirm or revise my findings.