Co-designing Collaborative Care Work through Ethnography

This chapter focuses on instances of ethnographically informed design of collaborative systems as they emerge from two European projects aimed at developing sociotechnical infrastructures based on more just collaborative practices. We outline and discuss a number of issues related to the importance of language, the relationship between digital and physical public engagement, the caring role of community gatekeepers, and the reconfiguration of sociotechnical infrastructures during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our contribution aims to uncover how ethnographically informed design can support caring-based practices of social collaboration in different contexts.