Co-design methods as interface for boundary crossing in the design of educational technology: an explorative case study

Background: Educational technology has the potential to serve as a bridge between university and practice placements in healthcare settings, but its design requires collaboration among diverse stakeholders (e.g., educators, clinical mentors, and students). Co-design facilitates the integration of diverse perspectives into the educational technology design process. Drawing on boundary crossing theory, co-design methods and their artefacts can serve as boundary objects ensuring effective communication and collaboration within the design team. While research has investigated design boundary objects, it has often neglected to explore co-design methods in terms of learning mechanisms for boundary crossing such as Identification, Coordination, Reflection and Transformation in the design of educational technology. Objectives: This paper explores how co-design methods function as design boundary objects and how they relate to learning mechanisms in the design of a mobile educational technology. This is relevant for designers and researchers of innovative educational technologies working in multidisciplinary teams. Methods: We conducted an exploratory case study of a one-year process to design mobile technology for healthcare education. Seven artefact-mediated interviews were carried out with participants involved in the design process and deductively analysed to examine the relationship between co-design methods and boundary crossing learning mechanisms. Results and Conclusions: Results indicate that co-design methods differ in their support of Identification, Coordination and Reflection for boundary crossing. This offers evidence and guidance for selecting co-design methods that support boundary crossing in multidisciplinary educational technology teams and valuable insights for researchers seeking to understand how collaborative design dynamics shape innovation across disciplinary boundaries.