Boundary Objects in Preliminary Design: Meaning-Making, Storytelling and Strategic Framing in Interdisciplinary Innovation

This paper explores the emerging roles and opportunities associated with Boundary Objects (BOs) in the context of preliminary design within interdisciplinary innovation project. Creative tools such as persona encyclopaedias, storytelling, design fiction and idea cards, serves as BOs in collaborative design setting. Drawing from domains such as design, management, and engineering, we synthesise existing definitions of BOs and highlight their generative, strategic, and reflective functions. Through a systematic literature review, enriched by empirical observations and exploratory interviews conducted in corporate R&D and design departments, we identify key mechanisms by which BOs operate in early project stages. Our findings emphasise the central role of BOs in supporting storytelling and imagination during phases of meaning-making convergence and vision- building. We demonstrate how BOs facilitate externalisation of thought, shared understanding, coordination, and the co-construction of meaning across disciplinary boundaries in organisation. The study highlights severalinsights: the use ofcombinations of semantic and generative BOs aimed attelling compelling stories and framing design questions, opportunities and challenges; the empowering effect of BOs in enhancing systemic understanding andbuilding shared confidence among stakeholders; and theorchestration role of designers in deploying and staging BOs as mediating artifacts. These findings provide a foundation forfuture research into thestrategic use, and potential instrumentalization, of BOs during non-regulated, exploratory stages of innovation processes.