Exploring Decentered End Users' Tensions Due to Rapid Technological Change

This dissertation examines how decentered users appropriate technologies amid rapid technological changes, focusing on digital activists, small business owners, and novice artists. It establishes a taxonomy for technological change for HCI research, emphasizing user interactions with platform technologies and concepts like appropriation and infrastructuring. The study also highlights how technological change can marginalize users by imposing rigid structures that often lack community-centered approaches, undermining infrastructures that support their needs. Ultimately, the dissertation hopes to propose design, policy, and theoretical contributions to create more inclusive systems that better serve the needs of decentered users.