Designing an Information System for Updating Land Records in Bangladesh: Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER)

Information Systems (IS) has become a research discipline accommodating and adapting diverse methodologies, methods, and techniques from reference disciplines as well as generating them. Action Design Research (ADR) has been developed as a broad research method, based on empirical study within developed countries. However, there remains a lack of methodologies for studying IS in the complex context of developing counties. This pioneering application of ADR in a developing country context identified that ADR requires additional lenses for understanding this additional complexity. Further, combining ADR with an ethnographic methodological framework has potential complementarity within IS research. This helps the researchers cycle through the problem formulation, design, evaluation, reflection and learning cycles. This paper therefore argues that Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER) is a potential methodological framework for IS research. While developed from a specific case of land records service in Bangladesh, ADER shows potential as a rigorous methodology for conducting IS research in any complex context.