Towards Platform-Based Co-Design: Reconciling Contextualization and the Design of Genericity Through Retrofit

‘Co-designing' services based on Earth Observation (EO) data has proven to be a successful way to overcome insufficiencies of different strategies employed by the EO experts to bridge the grand distance that separates them with potential users. Concurrently, we are witnessing the development of novel platforms designed to assist local authorities in policymaking based on EO. However, our understanding of the conditions that support a platform-based co-design remain unclear. We advance the possibility of new co design methods that conciliate two major challenges faced by platform designers: contextualizing the platform to demonstrate its usefulness and increasing the genericity of the platform components as to foster its generative potential. Approaching platforms as ‘data-use fit systems', our attempt is to propose a framework for such a ‘co-design' methods, enlightening retrofit mechanisms as a key lever to conciliate these two challenges. Based on a qualitative case study focused on the application of the DestinE platform to create a supersite for the city of Marseille, our objective lies in proposing a sustainable toolkit to support these new co-design methods.