Design Science Research in Information Systems. Advances in Theory and Practice

The business of business education is rapidly evolving because of changing economic and social conditions. At many institutions, class sizes are growing, more curricula is being offered online and traditionally successful pedagogical standards are being threatened unless they are adapted to the emerging economic realities of the 21st century. In response to the economic threats and consumers’ preferences, numerous IT artifacts are being created to facilitate online teaching in the hope that both quality and cost concerns will be ameliorated (albeit not always using the precepts of design science). The purpose of this ‘work-in-progress’ paper is to apply design science principles to outline an algorithm for a computer-aided peer assessment system, named Double-loop Mutual Assessment (DLMA). The project’s goal is to emulate the case method online, improve students’ learning experience and increase grading efficacy. The DLMA yields two IT artifacts: a method and an instantiation. The DLMA method artifact involves two loops of assessment: 1) a summative and formative mutual peer assessment algorithm for essays; and 2) a summative peer assessment of the feedback’s quality. An instantiation of DLMA system – a prototype and a beta-version has been implemented and described. Future directions of researching behavioral and operational aspects of the system are outlined. Potential applications of the artifact’s capabilities beyond the business necessity are discussed.

In recent years, the phenomena of open data have lent a promise to expand the innovation network of an organization. By allowing this type of access to organizational resources, developers beyond the organizational realm may hence generate new innovative artifacts surpassing existing capabilities. However, as an organization utilizes these innovation capabilities they simultaneously loose significant control over the innovations’ alignment with existing organizational goals. One way to nurture and harness this type of innovation is to arrange a contest where third party developers are invited to attend. Using a Design Science Research approach, such a contest - a type of artifact we coin Digital Innovation Contest - was designed and field-tested in 2011. The contest, WestCoast TravelHack 2011, summoned 76 developers distributed on 20 teams and was based on an idea to both generate novel digital service prototypes and having these applications promote the organizational goal of less energy-consuming ways of everyday travel. We conclude that by following our empirically grounded and theoretically informed guidelines, this type of contest can indeed increase the likelihood of both producing innovative artifacts and aligning these innovations with organizational goals.

In a business world characterized by ecosystem-based competition, APIs are key determinants of success. However, there is very little guidance on how organizations should go about making decisions about APIs. API design must account for the needs of both present and future application developers who use the API, and API outcomes depend on the success of the applications which incorporate that API. As a result, the design of APIs poses unique challenges that would benefit from design science inquiry. At the same time, these multiple sources of input in API design pose special challenges for carrying out design science research. This paper focuses on developing a foundation for future design science research in the API domain by addressing the first two steps of the design science research methodology recommended by Peffers et al: We view these as preliminary steps towards the development of a methodology for the design of APIs.

Process design remains an important yet difficult concern for postindustrial organizations. We posit that processes ‘become’ processes in these organizations only via their anchoring in concrete artifacts. Consequently, we identify and refine two design principles: processes as anchored in concrete material artifacts (not abstract process representations); and process design through recombination of existing processes (instead of designing anew). Our research starts by building a research artifact, ReKon, that instantiates these two principles. The paper describes this artifact with the meta-model, an implementation and the fine-granular process units, as template chunks created from ~1,200 real-world templates, to populate the tool. We revise and refine the design principles via successive cycles of implementation of the research artifact, formative evaluation with student teams, and insights obtained from an ongoing field study. We conclude by pointing to directions for future research.

In this paper, we report new findings of an on-going action design research (ADR) study in a public organization, Hansel Ltd, the central procurement unit of the Finnish government. A procurement organization acts as a middleman in public sector procurement. In order to coordinate large-scale procurement supported by a third party, inter-organizational systems (IOS) are needed. However, it is challenging to develop these, as the stakeholders are scattered and not necessarily interested in supporting the development of systems. Our goal is to identify and formulate design principles for efficient and effective inter-organizational systems development in the procurement context. With the particular focus on power relations between the involved organizations as well as their separate interests in the IOS being built, we develop design principles for such systems. In addition to being useful for our case company, we illustrate how these design principles can be applied to a class of similar problems.

Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) such as consulting and research and development services are important factors of performance and innovation in industrialized economies. However, current modeling techniques aimed at supporting service design do not account for their core characteristics such as the relational nature of exchanges among providers, clients, and other actors. Using data from a case of academic research and development service as a type of KIBS, we present a modeling technique that can support the design of successful service engagements in this domain. This work is guided by the understanding of service as a process of collaborative value creation, or value cocreation. Beyond the contribution of the modeling technique to KIBS design, our work shows the strength of using a Design Science Research methodology in creating design artifacts that are strongly aligned with the problem domain for which they are developed.

The importance of maturity models and business process management (BPM) is already recognized, resulting in many business process maturity models (BPMMs) to progress in BPM. Nonetheless, practitioners have no overview of existing BPMMs and their differences, which makes an informed choice difficult. Choosing the right model is, however, important, as our previous research indicated a great diversity of BPMMs. Therefore, we will design a decision tool that organizations can use to select a BPMM that best fits their needs. The current article introduces possible decision criteria for the tool. Furthermore, the methodology and the conceptual model are discussed. It is argued that the final decision tool can be extended with additional criteria and BPMMs, and translated towards other (maturity) models.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems are notoriously difficult for users to operate. We present a framework that consists of a data model and algorithms that serve as a foundation for implementing design principles presented in an earlier paper for improving ERP usability. The framework addresses the need for providing user, task and process context of each system-user interaction. It is intended to form an integral part of the system’s data model, which can be queried in real time to produce the information required for a variety of user interface enhancements. We have implemented the framework within an ERP prototype and used it in a laboratory emulation of ERP usage. Using the log data from this laboratory emulation, we present examples demonstrating how the framework meets its design goal of providing contextual and historical information.

In the effort to measure the business value and impact of Enterprise Architecture (EA), we need to adapt an appropriate form of information systems research in order to cope with the encountered challenges. For this purpose, we employed Design Science Research (DSR), a problem-driven approach to provide a solution represented as artifacts to provide the required utility to our stakeholders. The main contribution of this research is the detailed focus on how artifacts are actually conceived in an organizational context and the realization that a complex environment demands for more than just one artifact. Therefore, we are in need of a flexible research methodology. The DSR in this case is conducted within a well-known information systems research framework and follows widely accepted principles and guidelines. We explain the business need that arose from the current business practices in the course of a case study and describe the flexible research methodology we pursue and how we intend to solve the problems we identified as current DSR approaches lack the necessary flexibility we were looking for in practice. This flexibility greatly improves the management of our project in the organizational environment in terms of planning and implementation. Furthermore, we outline the evolutionary state of the artifacts during our adapted research process.

Local perspectives are important in designing effective enterprise integration solutions because they provide deep understanding of how each system may interact with others. Combining these local perspectives into a global solution is, however, equally important to develop a coherent enterprise integration blueprint. The participants in this exercise tend to be managers who have local but informal knowledge, and designers who may have a global but incomplete view that must be translated into formal models necessary for implementation. We develop a method and supporting modeling constructs aimed at such ‘designing-in-the-large’ that facilitates this bridging from local perspectives to global solutions, and from informal representations to formal models amenable for implementation. We present the result as design science outcomes – a Method and Modeling Constructs – that have benefited from multiple design-and-test cycles, and describe an authentic demonstration.

The current state of emergency communication is dispatch-mediated i.e. the messages from the scene are directed to responders and agencies through the dispatch. Emergency dispatch provides essential support to emergency responders during emergencies. However, there are several problems associated with the dispatch-mediated communication. Utilizing IBM’s message modeling concept, we develop a messaging model to provide support for computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems.

Mobile applications and services have received significant attention among researchers, developers, wireless carriers, and content providers. Many of these applications, such as Google Latitude and Find My Friends, use location-based information from GPS or wireless networks to support location-awareness. For mobile advertising, location information is certainly important, however deriving and utilizing user’s dynamic context can significantly improve the effectiveness of advertisements. In this "research-in-progress" paper, we present a design-science method for building artifacts for context-aware mobile applications. The method supports sensing, processing and deriving the most current context based on both live and stored information including current activities, location, and user profile. Several important research issues are also presented.

A magnitude of predominantly qualitative empirical and conceptual work has indentified design principles that provide for the design of creativity support systems (CSS). Numerous kernel theories have been utilized to inform CSS design principles. However, the logical next step for design research is pending: this rich field of research may now allow for more quantitative empirical research on the actual effects of particular CSS design features on creative performance. Against the background of this research gap, we first analyze existing CSS design theories applying an analysis framework encompassing obligatory design theory components. On that basis, we extract the underlying independent (latent) variables addressed in design principles. Our contribution entails a unified design theory for CSS, laying the basis for future research in IS design science on creativity-support. Furthermore, we reflect on our approach to develop a unified design theory and discuss its implications for the philosophy of design science.

Wikis were originally intended for knowledge work in the open Internet environment, and there seems to be an inherent tension between wikis’ affordances and the nature knowledge work in organizations. The objective of this paper is to investigate how tailoring wikis to corporate settings would impact users’ wiki activity. We begin by synthesizing prior works on wikis’ design principles; identifying several areas where we anticipate high tension between wikis’ affordances and organizational work practices. We put forward five propositions regarding how changes in corporate wikis deployment procedures may impact users’ wiki activity. An empirical study in one multi-national organization tested users’ perceptions towards these propositions, revealing that in some cases there may be a need for modifying wiki’s design, while in other cases corporations may wish to change their knowledge work practices to align with wikis’ affordances.

There are indications that contemporary IS research is increasingly concerned with the organizational environment in which information systems are part of or used in. This means that IS design science approaches could benefit from concerning themselves with the organizational environment its design artefacts are going to be implemented in, or even extend their perspectives to organizational design, in which aspects of IS usage then play a central role. This paper presents a design science approach for social systems from organizational science and discusses its implications for contemporary IS research.

Designing complex information systems is a task performed by design teams with team members coming from different domains with different expertise. Shared understanding between members of a design team throughout a project is still a challenge. A design framework is presented that integrates individual design knowledge, explicit design knowledge used by design teams, and computational design knowledge. For each type of design knowledge, several modeling languages for expressing conceptual models are known. Translation processes between these characteristic design knowledge explications are introduced. Core elements of this design framework, i.e., modeling languages and translations, are discussed by a Ubiquitous Information System (UIS) development project that was conducted over the period of several years.

Current proposals for combining action research and design science start with a concrete problem in an organization, then apply an artifact to improve the problem, and finally reflect on lessons learned. The aim of these combinations is to reduce the tension between relevance and rigor. This paper proposes another way of using action research in design science, which starts with an artifact, and then tests it under conditions of practice by solving concrete problems with them. The aim of this way of using action research in design science is to bridge the gap between the idealizations made when designing the artifact and the concrete conditions of practice that occur in real-world problems.

The paper analyzes the role of idealization in design science and compares it with the requirements of rigor and relevance. It then proposes a way of bridging the gap between idealization and practice by means of action research, called technical action research (TAR) in this paper. The core of TAR is that the researcher plays three roles, which must be kept logically separate, namely of artifact developer, artifact investigator, and client helper. Finally, TAR is compared to other approaches of using action research in design science, and with canonical action research.

Primarily in order to save costs, many shared service centres (SSCs) are being established in organisations. However, establishing SSCs is a challenging task for many organisations, including the Dutch government. This design science research aims to enhance SSC establishment with a decision enhancement studio for sourcing & sharing in the Dutch government. The proposed studio consists of a set of services for studio participants to analyse decision alternatives and improve collaboration. In this paper a studio design is presented with four decision enhancement services for sourcing & sharing that are delivered with an online tool and predefined scripts (called sourceLets). Future research will be dedicated to the scientific evaluation of the studio design by applying it to multiple case studies in the Dutch government.

To cope with seven identified problems in virtual and distributed management in Danske Bank we used a design science research approach to design a conceptual framework for team building in virtual and distributed project teams. The conceptual framework combines a six-phase teambuilding model with the notion and elements of social capital. Thus in each phase of teambuilding you build up all six elements of social capital. The complete six-by-six framework was diffused in Danske Bank in January 2011, and evaluated very positively in the summer of 2011. The framework is being implemented throughout Danske Bank in 2012. This paper gives an account of the framework content and the results from the evaluation. Finally the paper discusses how the contribution can be generalized and used in other companies.

Most existing requirements engineering approaches focus on the modelling and specification of the IT artefacts ignoring the environment where the application is deployed. Although some requirements engineering approaches consider the stakeholder’s goals, they still focus on the IT artefacts’ specification. However, IT artefacts are embedded in a dynamic organisational environment and their design and specification cannot be separated from the environment’s constant evolution. Therefore, during the initial stages of a requirements engineering process it is advantageous to consider the integration of IT design with organisational design. We proposed the ADMITO (Analysis, Design and Management of IT and Organisations) approach to represent the dynamic relations between social and material entities, where the latter are divided into technological and organisational entities. In this paper we show how by using ADMITO in a concrete case, the Queensland Health Payroll (QHP) case, it is possible to have an integrated representation of IT and organisational design supporting organisational change and IT requirements specification.

Companies incur huge costs in filing and defending patent lawsuits. A part of the problem arises from the fact that companies do not have a comprehensive understanding of the patents that they have cited and the patents that have cited their patents. By empirically analyzing the forward and backward citations of a set of litigated patents in the smart phone industry, we provide a method for profiling patents and identifying citation patterns. Our results show that while some patents share common forward and backward citations, others do not share any backward citations but share a lot of forward citations. We hypothesize that this maybe an indication of the convergence of different types of technologies. We also propose a new metric - Technology Overlap Factor - that can help in identifying convergence. In doing so, we provide a preliminary framework for further investigation and for building a patent analysis software system.

There is an increasing consensus that information systems (IS) design needs to consider effects related to environmental sustainability. While information technology (IT) can help solving environmental problems, it also causes environmental problems through emissions, wastage, and the consumption of renewable and nonrenewable resources throughout its lifecycle. Against this background, the notions of Green IT and Green IS have evolved. While the former primarily relates to the energy efficiency and equipment utilization of IT, the latter pertains to the design and implementation of information systems that contribute to sustainable business processes. In this paper, we explore how environmental sustainability can be considered in design science research. While traditionally design science research has focused on the utility of artifacts, we propose to also consider a design artifact’s environmental impact. We discuss how the design goal of sustainability relates to artifact utility and suggest a framework that describes two dimensions of design artifact environmental impact, namely direct and indirect environmental impacts. While the first pertains to effects of the physical existence of an IT artifact through its production, use, and disposal, the latter relates to the potential of the artifact to contribute to sustainable business processes.

Design Science Research (DSR) has emerged as an important approach in Information Systems (IS) research, evidenced by the plethora of recent related articles in recognized IS outlets. Nonetheless, discussion continues on the value of DSR for IS and how to conduct strong DSR, with further discussion necessary to better position DSR as a mature and stable research paradigm appropriate for IS. This paper contributes to address this need, by providing a comprehensive conceptual and argumentative positioning of DSR relative to the core of IS. This paper seeks to argue the relevance of DSR as a paradigm that addresses the core of IS discipline well. Here we use the framework defined by Wand and Weber, to position what the core of IS is.

Several papers have addressed the theory foundation of DSR. While researchers usually emphasize that the existence of such a knowledge base (KB) is essential for high quality design science research (DSR), opinions depart what kind of knowledge comprises such a knowledge base and which qualitative requirements apply regarding the knowledge leveraged. Some researchers demand that DSR is based on descriptive formal theories, while other scholars extend the width of the knowledge base also to unverified empirical evidence, conceptual knowledge and prescriptive knowledge. In order to provide some guidance for practical DSR, we apply literature review methodology on recent DSR articles to determine the common practice regarding the use and development of knowledge bases in previous projects. Based on this investigation, we discuss current issues, derive implications for future research and suggest measures to strengthen the role of the knowledge base in DSR.

A current issue in Design Science Research in Information Systems (DSRIS) is the manner in which to capture and present the knowledge gained in the course of a DSRIS project. Different conceptions of design science theory have been suggested. The most firmly established of these is Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT). Recently a number of authors have suggested that additional theory formulations are needed to capture higher-level knowledge:

higher level design science theories

(HLDST). As more types of theory to capture different types of information are proposed the question arises: how do these different theory types relate, to each other and also to the artifact that is constructed in the course of most DSRIS projects?

In this paper we develop a design-decision-constraint framework for characterizing design science theories. Additionally we relate design decisions to the dependent and independent variables of the theories; these traditional elements of theory have been lacking in most discussions of design science theories. By (re)introducing dependent and independent variables to the design science theory conversation we hope to bridge the gap between traditional explanatory theory and ISDT, and thereby help to clarify the discussions of theory in DSRIS.

Both the IT artifact and design theory are fundamental elements of a design science project. While literature provides an extensive discussion on why IT artifacts and design theory can be regarded as two sides of the same coin, an operational detailed model on how to actually decode and translate the one into the other is not yet to be found. In this paper, we address this important issue taking the example of social facilitation, a theory perspective that informs us about how the integration of social media features in IT-based routine work can increase task performance. With the help of this example we are able to demonstrate how a lack of discussion regarding the relationship between the actual implementation (IT artifact perspective) and corresponding variables (design theory perspective) can create significant issues of scientific rigor. In order to overcome this gap, we develop a design theorizing framework that differentiates between the structural model (inner model), the measurement model, and the design model (both outer model components). Based on our findings, the paper concludes with discussing potentially fruitful avenues for future research and theory development in design science.

This paper reports research in progress for the formalization of the notion of information systems design theory within the framework of formal logic and category theory. The formalization starts with the concept of four relational systems (empirical, subjective, conceptual and formal) that are linked by the four activities for design science research proposed by Venable (2006). Category theory is used as the basis of representing the concept of an information systems design theory as a formal framework by representing each of the four relational systems as either types (theories) or tokens (models). The arrows (morphisms) between the four concepts are explained using Barwise and Seligman’s (1997) definition of “infomorphisms”. The contributions of this research are that it explicates the role of kernel theory (background theory) in information systems design theory and it links this design theory to information fusion and information flow research efforts. It thus provides structures that represent a formalization of the design of information systems.

The central outcome of design science research (DSR) is prescriptive knowledge in the form of IT artifacts and recommendations. However, prescriptive knowledge is considered to have no truth value in itself. Given this assumption, the validity of DSR outcomes can only be assessed by means of descriptive knowledge to be obtained at the conclusion of a DSR process. This is reflected in the build-evaluate pattern of current DSR methodologies. Recognizing the emergent nature of IT artifacts this build-evaluate pattern, however, poses unfavorable implications regarding the achievement of rigor within a DSR project. While it is vital in DSR to prove the usefulness of an artifact a rigorous DSR process also requires justifying and validating the artifact design itself even before it has been put into use. This paper proposes three principles for evaluating DSR artifacts which not only address the evaluation of an artifact’s usefulness but also the evaluation of design decisions made to build an artifact. In particular, it is argued that by following these principles the prescriptive knowledge produced in DSR can be considered to have a truth-like value.

The consensus view is that the rigorous evaluation of design science (DS) artifacts is essential. There are many types of DS artifacts and many forms of evaluation; what is missing is guidance for how to perform the evaluation, more specifically, what evaluation methods to use with specific DS research outputs. Here we find and review 148 DS research articles published in a selected set of information systems (IS), computer science (CS) and engineering journals. We analyze the articles to develop taxonomies of DS artifact types and artifact evaluation methods; we apply these taxonomies to determine which evaluation methods are associated in the literature with particular artifacts. We show that there are several popular “artifact - evaluation method” combinations in the literature. The results inform DS researchers of usual and customary combinations of research artifacts and evaluation methods, potentially providing them with rationale and justification for an evaluation method selection.

Negotiation is a flexible mechanism for facilitating effective economic exchanges. Electronic negotiations allow participants to negotiate online and use analytical support tools in making their decisions. Software agents offer the possibility of automating negotiation process using these tools. The purpose of this work is to make progress towards outlining design-theoretical principles for agent-enhanced negotiation systems (AENS). This paper describes an electronic marketplace named DIANA (Deal-making system Incorporating Agents in Negotiations and Auctions) that allows involving software agents in negotiations. It also presents the results of experiments in agent-to-human negotiations. Various types of agents have been configured and paired up with human counterparts for negotiating product sale. The paper discusses the results and presents a set of rules for the design of AENS.

Evaluation is a central and essential activity in conducting rigorous Design Science Research (DSR), yet there is surprisingly little guidance about designing the DSR evaluation activity beyond suggesting possible methods that could be used for evaluation. This paper extends the notable exception of the existing framework of Pries-Heje et al [11] to address this problem. The paper proposes an extended DSR evaluation framework together with a DSR evaluation design method that can guide DSR researchers in choosing an appropriate strategy for evaluation of the design artifacts and design theories that form the output from DSR. The extended DSR evaluation framework asks the DSR researcher to consider (as input to the choice of the DSR evaluation strategy) contextual factors of goals, conditions, and constraints on the DSR evaluation, e.g. the type and level of desired rigor, the type of artifact, the need to support formative development of the designed artifacts, the properties of the artifact to be evaluated, and the constraints on resources available, such as time, labor, facilities, expertise, and access to research subjects. The framework and method support matching these in the first instance to one or more DSR evaluation strategies, including the choice of ex ante (prior to artifact construction) versus ex post evaluation (after artifact construction) and naturalistic (e.g., field setting) versus artificial evaluation (e.g., laboratory setting). Based on the recommended evaluation strategy(ies), guidance is provided concerning what methodologies might be appropriate within the chosen strategy(ies).