Stakeholder and Value Orientation in Digital Social Innovation: Designing a Digital Donation Concept to Support Homeless Neighbors

Abstract

During the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns, the infrastructure for supporting homeless neighbors disintegrated in many countries. As one important area of support, it became difficult to provide small donations to homeless neighbors. In an action design research-based project, as part of a national hackathon initiative and accelerator program, we contributed to the development of a digital donation concept. We frame this process as a digital social innovation for vulnerable people and highlight the need to consider stakeholder and value orientation during the design, implementation, and evaluation stages. Our findings include a reflection of the project course, a description of the developed concept, an analysis of how values shaped the design, and a formalization of learnings.