Design Science at the Intersection of Physical and Virtual Design

Today, many companies still struggle in documenting and reusing the knowledge gained by project teams. However, knowledge only creates value if it is applied. There exists a vast amount of research in the field of knowledge management focusing on documentation, storage and exchange of knowledge, but knowledge reuse is often omitted by researchers. The presented work aims to close this gap by developing a project knowledge management system enabling project teams to apply company-internal knowledge. We followed an action design research approach to explore meta-requirements in a case company, translate these requirements into design principles and test the design principles by evaluating an artifact of a project knowledge management system. By our work, the knowledge management research field can benefit since our design theory extends the existing body of knowledge. Furthermore, our research results are instantiated in a concrete artifact which can be directly transferred into practice.

In the past most IT innovations were initially introduced inside organizations and it was there where individuals first came in contact with new technologies. Nowadays, also the private life has gained importance for the adoption of technologies. Not often, individuals acquire new IT innovations privately, before they realize their value for professional activities and start using them for work. Their employers, however, struggle to integrate those innovations into their already heterogeneous organizational landscapes. The result is often an overly insufficient and ineffective use of private IT in organizations. In fact, previous integration research has provided various concepts to abate such negative effects, integrating the data and functionality of a few more private systems seems not a big deal. However, if one looks closer, it becomes apparent that private IT is autonomous from organizational control, rendering many common approaches inapplicable. Our research addresses this problem. Using the scenario of self-employed insurance brokers, we identify several characteristics of private IT ecosystems, here conceptualized as ubiquitous information systems (UIS), which prevent its productive use for professional activities. Based on these findings we suggest and instantiate a solution design which solves many issues of heterogeneity, but also accounts for the autonomy and distribution of the private UIS and its sub-systems. We conclude our research with a discussion of six propositions about the expected impact of our solution on individual performance.

Information technology (IT) allows for large-scale data collection and data analysis, e.g. through logs of user behavior and online surveys. While the issue of structured access to data is extremely important, previous research has not sufficiently emphasized design of data export for research purposes. If researchers are to make their data accessible, they must be empowered to export data in a flexible manner. In this paper, we employ action design research to develop design principles for data export in an e-Health context. Design is informed by a sociomaterial world-view, object-oriented patterns and principles, and usability goals. Through three build-intervene-evaluate cycles in an empirical setting where randomized controlled trials are designed, we propose nine design principles and a conceptual architecture for data export. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Design Science Research is now an accepted philosophy for Information Systems scholars, yet deciding where to publish is still enigmatic. Though several mainstream IS publications modified their editorial statements to welcome DSR manuscripts, their receptivity is uncertain. We survey the DSR community regarding individual researchers’ experiences publishing DSR work in journals, and summarize our findings here. We identify journals that the DSR community perceives to be both receptive to DSR work and impactful to their careers. Our goal is to aid Design Science researchers in the selection of appropriate outlets for their future work, and possibly identify potential journal outlets they may not have considered.

Information systems research and management science create knowledge which can be applied in organizations. Design science specifically aims at applying existing knowledge to solve interesting and relevant business problems and has been steadily gaining support in information systems research. However, design science is not the only design-oriented framework. Accordingly, this raises the question of whether it is possible to compare the results obtained from different brands of design-oriented research. This paper contributes to answering this question by comparing two research approaches, enabling mutual learning possibilities and suggesting improvements in transparency and rigor. The objective of this paper is to compare design science research with the constructive research approach. The conclusion is that the two approaches are compatible, save for details in practical requirements and partly underlying philosophical assumptions, but both have something to teach each other about how to define and execute design-oriented research in information systems and management science.

Researchers in the area of Information Systems (IS) applying the design science paradigm are confronted with the challenge to make theoretical contributions which also help to solve current and anticipated problems in practice. This is often referred to as the rigor and relevance challenge of design science research. To ensure relevance of the research outcome, research projects in IS are often conducted in close cooperation with one or more industry partners. This typically leads to a need for early results and a binding to the specific organizational context of the participating industry partner(s).

In this paper, we propose pattern-based design research (PDR), an iterative design research method consisting of four phases, to overcome this problem. We argue that patterns as early stage design artifacts enable researchers to build innovative artifacts that address current and anticipated problems of practitioners in an organizational context. Building on well-established concepts as patterns, design theories, and the design theory nexus, the proposed research method enables a researcher to theorize and learn from the intervention at the industry partner(s) while performing rigorous and relevant design science research. We illustrate the applicability of PDR by presenting a research project from the area of enterprise architecture management.

Several approaches were developed for business process improvement (BPI) (e.g. Six Sigma). However, it is often stated that these approaches do not provide sufficient support for the performers of a BPI initiative, especially concerning the phase where applicable measures that provoke improvement (act of improvement) are needed. In this paper, we suggest BPI patterns as a means to directly support the act of improvement. Even though the common concept of patterns had great success in other domains of information systems (IS), the concept has not been transferred to BPI so far. In this paper, the demonstration of BPI patterns in a case study is focused. The BPI patterns, which represent the artifact in this design science research, are derived on the basis of a previously developed metamodel. The results from the demonstration were discussed with the process owners to get a first evaluation of the developed BPI patterns.

Process mining has been gaining significant attention in academia and practice. A promising first step to apply process mining in the audit domain was taken with the mining of process instances from accounting data. However, the resulting process instances constitute graphs. Commonly, timestamp oriented event log formats require a sequential list of activities and do not support graph structures. Thus, event log based process mining techniques cannot readily be applied to accounting data. To close this gap, we present an algorithm that determines an activity sequence from accounting data. With this algorithm, mined process instance graphs can be decomposed in a way they fit into sequential event log formats. Event log based process mining techniques can then be used to construct process models. A case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the presented approach. Results reveal that the preprocessing of the event logs considerably improves the derived process models.

In enterprise resource planning (ERP) environments the audit of business process compliance is a complex task as audit relevant context information about the ERP system like application controls (ACs) need to be considered to derive comprehensive audit results. Current compliance checking approaches neglect such information as it is not readily available in process models. Even if ACs are automatically analysed with audit software, the results still need to be linked to related processes. By now, this linking is not methodically supported. To address this gap this paper presents a method to automatically enrich process models with audit relevant information about ACs. The method consists of three phases: process model construction, automated analysis of ACs, and model enrichment. It utilizes two existing artefacts and combines them to provide a comprehensive basis for compliance checking. Moreover, the enriched process models can support auditors in conducting process audits in ERP environments.

Design Theory has been written about extensively in Information Systems (IS), but remains heavily problematic. Some researchers explicitly exclude design theory as an outcome of Design Science Research (DSR), others disagree about the form and purpose of design theories, many consider design theories to be too complicated to construct, some journal editors and researchers give low priority to design theory, and very few DSR publications propose design theories.

This paper reviews and critically examines the IS literature on design theories, the nature of technological design artefacts compared to phenomena in the natural, biological, and social domains, and whether design theory is ‘prescriptive’ or ‘explanatory’.

Using a DSR approach, the paper makes recommendations concerning the form and use of design theory, in order to move toward a resolution of the disagreements about design theory and progress the development of clearer and more useful formalisations of knowledge for practical use.

Case studies are a valuable way to look at the world around us and have been gaining special importance in the last years in the information technology area. However, some problems, as for example the lack of rigor or the dependency of a single case exploration, preclude case study generalization. Therefore, we propose to perform an extensive literature review about case study methodology, specifically in information technology domain, in order to leverage critical information about organizations, which should be present in all information technology case studies to enable their generalization and pattern matching. We end our research with limitations, contributions and future work.

Despite increased acceptance of design science research, concerns about rigor and relevance permeate the research community. One way to increase rigor is by codifying design knowledge into design theories. While this idea is gaining popularity, it is unclear how to approach design theorizing in a scientifically rigorous, yet practically relevant, way. In this paper, we address one particularly murky issue in design science research: reconciling theoretical abstractness with practicality. Since many design theories are moderately abstract, a gap exists between theoretical propositions and concrete issues faced in practice. We present a case study of real information system (IS) development where these issues become evident. Based on the identified issues we provide four theory-driven recommendations including specification of transformational rules, developing or imagining a real IS artifact, specification of boundary conditions and over-specification of the theoretical core. The consequences of these recommendations for design science theorizing are discussed.

We live in an experience economy. The more saturated the global market becomes with products offering the same functions, services and quality, the more companies are wanting to appeal to the intangible needs and desires of consumers. To achieve this, designers and researchers are turning inwards to investigate the psychological factors affecting peoples’ relationships and reactions towards design properties. For this reason, design semantics studies on user experience have been advancing all the time. Much emphasis has been placed on visual product experience, as well as the relationship between brand perception and user experience. These are important steps, which are referred to in this paper. However, experience is multi-sensory, that is, our mental impressions and representations are constantly stimulated and informed by what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. This paper explains user experience from a semiotic perspective. It then introduces a cognitive semiotic model, the C-model, of user experience and describes its application in an empirical study. Findings of the study suggest that while people favor what is perceived through sight in contrast to what is perceived through touch. However, the sense of touch inspires imaginative interpretation of form and associations with visual properties such as color.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues pertaining to the development of third-party applications aimed to be hosted at software platforms. While prior research has addressed design challenges in platform design, and suggested a boundary resources model to understand such design, we argue that the application developers’ perspective has not yet been scrutinized. Drawing on design experiences from application development for the Facebook platform, we suggest further elaboration of the boundary resources model for software platforms. Our results show that the developers and applications are highly affected by the unpredictability of software platforms. Based on an empirically justified account of experience with boundary resources dependencies, we propose a set of implications for third-party development as well as platform development and maintenance. The study should be helpful in determining the influence of boundary resources on third-party developers and applications whilst planning for application development on such platforms. It should also be useful to platform owners involved in the development and maintenance of boundary resources for third-party development.

This research aims to contribute to an emerging area of

organizational design research

, focusing on educational innovation. Our contribution comes in a form of an innovative organizational design solution for on-campus large lecture instruction, here named the Team Net Based Learning (TNBL) model, designed by the author and later independently adopted by other educators. The paper reports on a combined design and action research project of initiating, designing, implementing and evaluating the TNBL model (design research artifact), over a period of two years in a real-life setting, from a standpoint of a reflective practitioner/designer, engaged in action research in the context of her own practice. The model continues to be used to this day. Even though this project was implemented in the information systems domain, the main design artifact is discipline- and content- agnostic, and as such could be used in any other discipline. The outcomes of this research further strengthen the argument previously made by organization studies researchers that scholars researching organization systems and processes can use their knowledge and experience to organise and manage student activities.

Design theory is often an outcome of Design Science Research (DSR) and kernel theories provide explanatory justification of design principles. But like an iceberg, many of the design principles lie hidden under the surface or inadequately specified. Ascertaining the completeness of the design principles requires additional design process steps to surface underlying assumptions and to abstract design principles which emerge during secondary design. We follow the development of a project management decision support artifact and describe the primary design, based on literature on agile systems development, and the subsequent secondary design that took place in a financial company. Analysis reveals an “iceberg phenomenon”; only a partial design justification was initially apparent, and underlying design assumptions are only revealed through deeper reflection and analysis. We conclude by providing guidelines for making design justification more explicit in both the design and the evaluation phases.

Conceptual modelling and theory building are tightly bundled together, since conceptual models are one way to express one’s thoughts, assumptions, beliefs and convictions, respectively his theory referencing a domain. However, while theory building does account for a process of knowledge creation and the evolution of a theory, which is characterised by falsification and rebuttals, a conceptual model remains a vessel of expressing a current state of knowledge. A theory held in a person’s mind might develop during gaining experiences and through discussions with others, usually held in natural language. A conceptual model, however, disregards these aspects of theory building. Therefore in this paper, we will introduce an approach of purposefully constructing and validating conceptual models by means of arguments. This approach will not just enable a validation of a conceptual model against the theory of the creator, but against all theories the respective stakeholders might have.

The Design Science Research Roadmap (DSR-Roadmap) [1] aims to give detailed methodological guidance to novice researchers in Information Systems (IS) DSR. Focus group evaluation, one phase of the overall study, of the evolving DSR-Roadmap revealed that a key difficulty faced by both novice and expert researchers in DSR, is abstracting design theory from design. This paper explores the extension of the DSR-Roadmap by employing IS deep structure ontology (BWW [2-4]) as a lens on IS design to firstly yield generalisable design theory, specifically ‘IS Design Theory’ (ISDT) elements [5]. Consideration is next given to the value of BWW in the application of the design theory by practitioners. Results of mapping BWW constructs to ISDT elements suggest that the BWW is promising as a common language between design researchers and practitioners, facilitating both design theory and design implementation.

The electricity industry is currently confronted with regulatory and technological change that leads to fundamental transformation of the value propositions and innovation processes of enterprises. New services are one possibility to compete in the new market environment. This paper proposes a service development process for the electricity industry that builds up on existing approaches. The process model was developed by means of an embedded research framework that combines qualitative and quantitative methods in a multi method approach. A first evaluation of the process was conducted with a partner of the electricity industry in Switzerland. Potential service areas resulting from literature research, expert interviews (N=19), and an Open Space event with lead customers (N=33) build the basis for a choice based conjoint study. Potential services could already be identified in a pretest study. The paper shows that co-creation with customers and experts, enables the service innovation process.

Information Systems play an important role in achieving sustainable solutions for the global economy. In particular, Information Systems are inevitable when it comes to the transition from the “current” to the “smart” power grid. This enables an improved balancing of both electricity supply and demand, by shifting load – based on the projected supply gap and electricity prices – on the demand side smartly. As this requires a specific Information System, namely a Demand Response system, we address the challenge of designing such a system by utilizing the design science approach: determining general requirements, deducing the corresponding information requirements, analyzing the information flow, designing a suitable Information System, demonstrating its capability, and, finally, evaluating the design. The design process is reiterated fully until a viable solution, i.e. an IS artifact, has been developed. This paper describes both the design process as such and the final IS artifact. Moreover, we summarize our lessons learnt from using and adopting the design science approach within this practical, bottom-up case study.

Improvements in managing IT service management (ITSM) processes are continuously sought by IT organisations. However, resources are limited and the choice of processes for improvement is a critical decision point for the managers. In this paper, we report a process selection decision model developed with task-technology fit theory as the lens as the basis for our Design Science Research approach. The model is instantiated with an outcome of a decision support tool. The process selection decision model uses service perception factors from the Service Quality (SERV-QUAL) model and business drivers from the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives to ensure that the ITSM processes are prioritised based on the key business drivers that have the highest impact on the business. Responses to a service perception survey provided by the business stakeholders combined with workshops guided the tool development as did considering the BSC perspectives with business drivers rather than ITSM processes being ranked directly by stakeholder participants. Usefulness of the tool is then demonstrated in a case organisation. The main contribution of the study is to provide evidence-based decision support for IT service providers to select the most relevant service processes to improve. Future research includes longitudinal evaluation of the tool’s output advice and the tool’s use in other organisations.

Greenhouse gas emission reporting gained importance in the last years, due to societal and governmental pressure. However, this task is highly complex, especially in interdependent batch production processes and for reporting on the product-level. Green information systems, which collect, process and enhance the environmental information basis, are seen as a possible solution for this complex task, but only few Green IS accrued in IS research and practice. In this paper, we present initial results from an action design science research project. We studied three meat processing companies and developed a Green IS artifact that is capable to collect, process and report energy consumption and GHG emissions on product and process level. The evaluation for two sausage products shows that the artifact enhances the information basis with more detailed data towards average calculations, enabling more sustainable business processes. Finally, we propose design principles for the class of environmental accounting on product-level.

Geoscientists and engineers use anomalies which are parts of a profile that is above or below the surrounding average to infer subsurface targets (groundwater, ore and petroleum). Customarily, they are detected by processing field measurements including geological and geophysical data using methods such as stacking (averaging), Fourier analysis and filtering. The issue is these methods often result in partial detection because they perform partial separation of wanted from unwanted anomalies and the error in separation gets propagated into data layers and subsequent analyses, thereby resulting in less accurate spatial predictions. In order to understand and address this issue, we investigate whether the design methodology for construction of mapping applications for characterizing geospatial variables achieves logical consistency of data layers and improve mapping accuracy of groundwater flow. We present a design methodology as an artifact and evaluated it by applying it to hydrogeological and geodetic data acquired from the Santa Clara Valley, CA, USA. The result shows that data parts offer distinctive patterns of geometric features that are signatures of groundwater flow for sustainable groundwater management. The practical implications of the result can be applied by software developers and data modelers, information systems and operations managers to construct logically consistent and well-composed environmental information systems.

Information systems (IS) managers apply maturity models (MMs) to evaluate and enhance their organization’s capabilities. Since the MM concept has become increasingly popular in research and practice over the past years, the number of similar or competing MMs has literally exploded. Despite their popularity, MMs are often criticized for being either too generic or too comprehensive. Therefore, prior to their application, organizations tend to adjust them according to their specific requirements. Unfortunately, IS management lacks methods to support this task systematically. In this article we intend to close this methodical gap as we develop a meta-model that supports a systematic configuration of MMs according to organization-specific requirements. We conduct a thorough literature analysis to construct this artifact, i.e., a maturity model meta-model (MMMM). Thereafter, we apply a tool-supported qualitative content analysis to extend, ground, and evaluate those components using a representative subset of 13 publicly available MMs. Finally, we identify four use cases and adapt configuration mechanisms from related research areas to illustrate and demonstrate our artifact’s utility. Both IS practice and research benefit from our findings as we contribute a systematic meta-model-based approach that helps to analyze MMs and configure them to organization-specific requirements.

The paper motivates the design and development of a domain-specific method for Multi-Perspective Hospital Modelling and presents requirements the method should fulfil. The contribution follows the design science research process and the identified requirements serve as basis for evaluating related work from the medical informatics and information systems discipline. As out of all evaluated approaches, the Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling method fulfils the requirements to the greatest extent, it is to be extended towards the proposed Multi-Perspective Hospital Modelling method.

The logistics service industry is characterized by a high level of collaboration between logistics customers and providers. In fact, sophisticated, knowledge-intense business models such as fourth party and lead logistics evolved in recent years that are responsible for planning, coordination, and monitoring entire supply chains across logistics companies. The Logistics Service Engineering and Management (LSEM) platform is a service-oriented infrastructure for the development and management of collaborative contract logistics enabling fourth party and lead logistics. The service modeling framework (SMF) is a central element of the LSEM-platform. It allows users of the platform to define, manage and combine logistics services from different providers and allows for an integrated view on complex services setups. In this paper, the Service Meta Modeling Editor is presented as an essential part of the SMF. It allows connecting and integrating various types of service models and avoids the need to define and maintain a complex, global service model. Instead a comprehensive service model is built bottom-up in that elements from different models are linked on a metamodel level.

Within this article the prototype icebricks is described by its main characteristics which are layers of abstraction, attribution, reference models and semantic standardization by the use of a glossary. The layers are predefined in order to enhance the clarity and comparability of the processes. Attribution is used – beside the layers of abstraction – as means to reduce the complexity of the models by shifting information to analyzable and easily maintainable attributes instead of sophisticated control flows within the process elements. The glossary is inspired by the idea of model conventions. Each business object within it is defined once and can be used with defined activities as process building blocks within all models with the same semantic meaning. Furthermore, reference models are incorporated into the prototype to enable modelers with the possibility to create or derive purposeful models in a short period of time. The prototype was thoroughly and very successfully evaluated in its web based version in two process modeling projects aiming for process reorganization for an ERP system change and for a complete documentation of the process landscape for knowledge management.

The power consumption in data centers due to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is significant across the globe. With recent developments in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), we notice a paradigm shift in computing. Desktops (PCs) and laptops are being replaced by smart phones and tablets. A major impact of this architecture is a shift of computing resources from personal desktops and laptops to centralized server farms. This implies increases in power consumption in the large-scale servers used in these infrastructures. In such a scenario, optimizing the IT resources for power consumption is a necessity. The first step of such an optimization at the application level is the knowledge of how much energy the application is consuming. A major challenge in this domain is to develop a software-based energy metering tool that can measure the energy consumptions at the OS process level. We have developed an OS process-level power metering tool that can accurately estimate the energy usage based on system resource usages, and demonstrated that our tool provides energy measurement for complex e-business applications with greater than 95% accuracy.

MD

2

is a framework for cross-platform model-driven mobile development. It consists of a domain-specific language for describing business apps concisely and of generators that automatically create complete iOS and Android apps from this specification.

Designers.

MD

2

has been created as a research prototype at the Department of Information Systems,University of Münster. Henning Heitkötter and Tim A. Majchrzak, both interested in cross-platform approaches and mobile applications in general, supervised the implementation, which was mainly carried out by master students Sören Evers, Klaus Fleerkötter, Daniel Kemper, Sandro Mesterheide, and Jannis Strodtkötter.

A route trajectory is described as the upcoming course of the road in geographical terms as well as in terms of time. This enables the possibility of providing context-aware applications in modern vehicles. In order to generate such a trajectory with its context aware information, it is still necessary to enter a destination point into a navigation system. However, the most frequent commutations (drives, trips) are to known destinations and are therefore not performed with any active guidance system. This means that the prediction must be determined in a different manner. This paper presents a method, which predicts the route trajectory of a vehicle based on the travel history of its user. In addition to the traveled distance further context parameters are used for the prediction. These parameters include the current time of day, day of week and the route frequency, which indicates the number of times a particular route has already been traveled. Moreover, the developed prediction is evaluated in a volunteers study with about 500 rides and about 9.500 driven kilometers. The results show that in 80 percent of the cases the forward-lying path can be predicted correctly.

Management support systems

(MSS) help managers to perform their jobs more productively and efficiently by serving as their central, hands-on, day-to-day source of information [1]. As an umbrella term, “MSS” represents a major class of information systems (IS) covering management information systems, decision support systems, executive information systems, and, more recently, knowledge management and business intelligence (BI) systems [2].

It is well-established in the literature that active participation vitalizes and supports the students’ learning process much better than a traditional lecture style. One way of fostering participation in lectures is through pedagogical designs that stimulate cooperative activities among students, using classroom response systems. In this paper we present a prototypical implementation of a classroom response system called PINGO (

P

eer

In

struction for very large

g

r

o

ups). PINGO is offered to all instructors worldwide as a hosted service free of charge.

Companies today operate in an increasingly dynamic environment. Due to their overall responsibility, managers are particularly affected by this situation. Information systems (IS) that aim at helping managers are known as management support systems (MSS). They are designed to serve as their central, hands-on, day-to-day source of information [1].

It has been asserted that information systems (IS) can both enhance and undermine creativity. Earlier, we have proposed an IS design theory for systems that support individual creativity through fostering convergent and divergent thinking. In this paper we outline how we have transformed this abstract blueprint into a running software prototype. We chose cooking – a familiar creative process – as an exemplary domain to illustrate the form and function of the prototype. In future work, the prototype and the underlying design theory will be empirically evaluated using focus groups and laboratory experiments.

Project Smart Grid:

The Intelligent Electrical System Is the Way Forward

In 2012 Peter Møllgaard from Department of Economics and Rasmus Pedersen from Department of IT Management initiated a new project supported by CBS Sustainability Platform. The purpose of the project is to establish an understanding of micro-economic and IT challenges related to Smart Grid technology.

The mini-smart-grid project at Copenhagen Business School (MSC@CBS) project seeks to investigate the business opportunities and issues that arise from this new technology. The project revolves around the concepts of Smart Grids, Smart Meters and prosumers. Smart Grids are a new method of managing electricity and power supply. It has not reached its full potential yet, but it offers a more interactive platform for both the consumer and the main supplier e.g. Dong Energy. The Smart Grid will collect and control the behavior of consumers and suppliers in order to make the system more effective and sustainable. The consumers or suppliers will be able to control certain appliances in their homes so that they become a resource for the system. For example, the customer or supplier can choose to switch off the freezer for 30 minutes during the night to save energy.

The earlier critical decision can be made, the more business value can be retained or even earned. The goal of this research is to reduce a decision maker’s action distance to the observation of critical events. We report on the development of the software tool preCEP that facilitates predictive event-driven process analytics (edPA). The tool enriches business activity monitoring with prediction capabilities. It is implemented by using complex event processing technology (CEP). The prediction component is trained with event log data of completed process instances. The knowledge obtained from this training, combined with event data of running process instances, allows for making predictions at intermediate execution stages on a currently running process instance’s future behavior and on process metrics. preCEP comprises a learning component, a run-time environment as well as a modeling environment, and a visualization component of the predictions.

Business models are of great importance for business innovation. They can be understood as conceptual models that describe how organizations create and deliver value. Their creation is increasingly supported by information technology artifacts, as information technology facilitates information sharing, allows for continuous modification, and supports complex calculations. In this paper, we introduce a new prototype to create process-oriented business models: the OctoProz tool. We build up on creativity support system literature, present the design of the artifact, and discuss its significance for both research and practice. We close with an outlook on the evaluation of OctoProz.

The focus of this research in progress is relationships between Design Science Research (DSR) on one hand, and Empirical Research (ER) on the other. More specifically, it is devoted to investigating which tasks included in a DSR project should/could require conducting ER studies or using already existing ER knowledge. The paper presents a methodology for enumerating DSR tasks and gives examples of logical analysis of some of them to determine requirements or usability of ER studies or ER-related knowledge for completing these tasks. The enumeration of DSR tasks is done by considering possible trajectories of DSR projects in a specially constructed state space. The latter consists of two subspaces; one is the space of specific situations, problems and solutions, the other – of generic situations, problems and solutions. The first subspace represents test cases used for validating DSR hypotheses that the second subspace represents. In the terms of this space, DSR is considered to be a way of generating and testing hypotheses for future adoption. The project trajectory is identified via movements within and between subspaces. Examples of such movements are: generalization of a specific situation/problem, designing a generic solution, evaluating the results of implementing a solution in a specific situation.

Technology mediated learning services (TMLS) play an important role for software on-the-job-training due to increasing cost pressure for on-the-job-training and increasing demand for mobile learning solutions. As there is no structured approach to systematically deliver productive TMLS this research study creates a holistic reference model of a productivity-optimized TMLS delivery process. This productivity-optimized model focuses on efficient use of resources at a constant or increasing TMLS outcome by a set of process models and design guidelines for TMLS providers. It is developed within a design research setting and derives existing knowledge from the literature and three in-depth-case studies with training providers for software applications. Consequently, we build a reference model that supports the following activities of technology oriented learning: training preparation, training delivery within the classroom, training delivery through internet and training evaluation under consideration of various stakeholders, such as the TMLS provider, trainer, TMLS participant and the participants company.

Design Science Research (DSR) methods are much debated by the IS community with regard to outcome and research process. This debate creates ambiguity for the novice researchers in terms of selecting appropriate DSR methods. To address this ambiguity, this essay proposes a framework for classifying the DSR methods by providing conceptual clarity about DSR outcome and DSR research process. The proposed framework creates a taxonomy differentiating between outcomes as

a priori

formulated or

emergent

through contextual interaction, likewise, viewing the research process as

deductive

or

abductive

. The taxonomy provides guidance to the researchers before embarking any DSR projects. The essay contributes to the on-going discussion on utilization of the DSR methods in DSR projects.

Methods are a common artifact within design science research (DSR). In the context of a research project we faced the challenge to develop a method and a software artifact in parallel. However, existing work in DSR and method engineering does not explicitly address the simultaneous development of two interdependent artifacts. Therefore, we developed a DSR process that allows the construction of so-called software-intensive methods. It considers the interdependencies of both artifacts and optimizes common DSR processes by including early feedback cycles for intermediate results allowing the identification of initial design weaknesses like missing or dispensable design elements, inappropriate element design and usability flaws. The process has been applied and its feasibility has been demonstrated in the research project.

In practice up to 80% of the overall processed data is only available in an unstructured form, such as documents. The handling of documents within organizations is still an issue in both, research and practice. Employees perceive the way to handle business-relevant documents as high effort and struggle with handling documents compliant to organizational standards. As a result documents become decoupled from the defined business processes and scattered all over the organizations IT landscape. Understanding users and their needs in order to increase their intention to use Enterprise Systems consistent to organization-wide business processes is a gap in the existing literature. This paper presents a design science research project focusing on user guidance for document-driven processes in Enterprise Systems. Building on existing research in user guidance, we suggest to increase the user’s individual awareness towards processing documents consistent to organizational processes. In addition to our research design, we present a preliminary artifact version based on the results of an exploratory interview study.

The potential for multiplayer computer games to serve as activities that can help increase interaction, cooperative tendencies and harmony in groups has been the subject of past research. However, there is still a long way to go before we can understand how positive group behavior and team dynamics in multiplayer games can impact real world collaboration. In our research work, we investigate this relationship further through

Operation Sting

, a cooperative multiplayer game we have designed to serve as an ice-breaker. Our goal is to study how participation in such a game affects collaboration in subsequent group work.

This work-in-progress paper introduces the concept of Respondent Behavior Logging (RBL), consisting of static and dynamic models that conceptualize respondent behavior when filling in online questionnaires. It is argued that web-based survey design may benefit from logging as a technique for evaluation, since such data may prove useful during re-design of questionnaires. Although other aspects of online surveys have attracted considerable attention both in industry and in literature, how the Web may leverage new and innovative techniques to support survey design is still underexplored. Some preliminary results are reported in the paper, and issues are raised regarding how to appropriately evaluate and demonstrate the qualities of the RBL concept as a means for survey re-design.

A significant drawback of communications between patients and health professionals is their restriction to face-to-face encounters within healthcare institutions. This limits the support health professionals can provide to ensure patient adherence, which is a significant contributor to therapeutic outcome and overall healthcare expenses. Pharmacist-patient health information systems (PPHIS) have the potential to address existing non-adherence behaviors by enabling pharmacist-patient communication over the time of therapy. Due to the lack of prior research, design principles for PPHIS are derived from the information-, motivation-, and strategy model [4] and feedback from pharmacists in 21 Swiss pharmacies. To demonstrate the feasibility of the design principles, we implement and preliminarily evaluate a PPHIS.