Incompleteness and redundancy: organisational components of a design-enabled infrastructure to support coordinated action of multiple stakeholders

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses an R&D project funded by the European Commission and aimed at studying, testing and implementing technological and gamification-based solutions for hearing impairment. In the course of the last three years, a variety of stakeholders with their different wants and needs, languages and agendas have interacted within the project. Particularly, this paper focuses on (1) how the project has built a design-enabled infrastructure to support the interplay of these stakeholders and (2) on how some specific organisational dimensions of this infrastructure - namely incompleteness, and redundancy - favoured coordinated action. Even though the concept of infrastructure has been thoroughly examined in design research, the organisational dimensions that allow to at least partially control divergences and convergences among the various stakeholders remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper intends to offer a contribution at the intersection of design research and organisational studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Design infrastructures
• coordinated action
• healthcare

Acknowledgments

The author is particularly grateful for the insightful comments emerged during the review process. The research leading to this contribution has received funding from the European Community’s H2020 Programme under Grant Agreement No. 644051. This article reflects the author’s views. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs300/en/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 LEIT Information and Communication Technologies [644051].