Focus Groups for Artifact Refinement and Evaluation in Design Research

Focus groups to investigate new ideas are widely used in many research fields. The use of focus groups in design research poses interesting opportunities and challenges. Traditional focus group methods must be adapted to meet two specific goals of design research. For the refinement of an artifact design, exploratory focus groups (EFGs) study the artifact to propose improvements in the design. The cycle of build and evaluate using EFGs continues until the artifact is released for field test in the application environment. Then, the field test of the design artifact may employ confirmatory focus groups (CFGs) to establish the utility of the artifact in field use. Rigorous investigation of the artifact requires multiple CFGs to be run with opportunities for quantitative and qualitative data collection and analyses across the multiple CFGs. In this paper, we discuss the adaptation of focus groups to design research projects. We demonstrate the use of both EFGs and CFGs in a design research project in the health care field

Information sharing performance management: a semantic interoperability assessment in the maritime surveillance domain

Information Sharing (IS) is essential for organizations to obtain information in a cost-effective way. If the existing information is not shared among the organizations that hold it, the alternative is to develop the necessary capabilities to acquire, store, process and manage it, which will lead to duplicated costs, especially unwanted if governmental organizations are concerned. The European Commission has elected IS among public administrations as a priority, has launched several IS initiatives, such as the EUCISE2020 project within the roadmap for developing the maritime Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE), and has defined the levels of interoperability essential for IS, which entail Semantic Interoperability (SI). An open question is how can IS performance be managed? Specifically, how can IS as-is, and to-be states and targets be defined, and how can organizations progress be monitored and controlled? In this paper, we propose 11 indicators for assessing SI that contribute to answering these questions. They have been demonstrated and evaluated with the data collected through a questionnaire, based on the CISE information model proposed during the CoopP project, which was answered by five public authorities that require maritime surveillance information and are committed to share information with each other.Postprint (published version

The Design of the Agile Culture Transformation Canvas

In today’s fast-paced environment where priorities are constantly changing, organisations are increasingly turning towards agile. When doing so, organisations ought to consider their organisational culture because being agile is inherently a matter of culture. This is however a challenging task, in particular, because what is meant by having an agile culture highly depends on the organisation. Therefore, to help organisations in this journey we have initiated a design science research project to design the Agile Culture Transformation Canvas (ACTC). The ACTC is a visual tool that offers a collaborative space for its users to analyse their current culture, co-design their desired agile culture and define steps on how to close the gap between the two. In this short paper, we present the steps we have already taken in the design journey of the ACTC and along with the next ones planned

Teaching Sustainable Business Models— A Modeling-Driven Approach

Purpose. This study reports on a master-level university course that teaches sustainability by conveying factual and methodological knowledge in terms of business model development. Design/methodology/approach. We designed the course based on several years of experience and knowledge obtained from previous iterations. For evaluating the course’s usefulness, we used standardized questionnaires and a focus group. Findings. We complement the body of courses on business models by presenting a master-leveled course design seeking to enhance students’ awareness for acting sustainably utilizing a business model development perspective, and a set of lessons learned and recommendations to be employed by, for example, course designers. Research limitations/implications. By focusing on business model development, we gathered promising results indicating an increased awareness to act sustainably. Thereby we open further research avenues that, for instance, may investigate the effect of specific tools on students’ awareness or behavior, explore the applicability of existing tools within a university context, or develop new tools for supporting students in gaining an understanding of sustainability via business model development. Practical implications. Course designers and lecturers in particular can apply the presented design and draw on the experiences and recommendations we obtained from performing our course to create or refine existing/new university courses. Originality/value. We provide valuable insight on how to design business model courses that empower students to contribute to sustainable development by describing a suitable structure, assignments, and content. Keywords. Business Model Development, Business Model Modeling, Software Support, Sustainability, Information Systems Education Article Classification. Case stud

Understanding Coordination Support of Enterprise Architecture Management – Empirical Analysis and Implications for Practice

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) is a means to guide the consistent evolution of business and IT artifacts from an enterprise-wide perspective. This paper aims at understanding the means by which EAM supports this coordination task. Informed by theory of coordination and based on empirical data (n=95) we group participating enterprises in different clusters: (1) non-coordinators, (2) dominators and (3) negotiators. We find that a similar awareness of opportunities exists in all three clusters, yet there are gaps in the realization of EAM coordination support: non-coordinators show the lowest realization, negotiators the highest. Based on this clustering and two follow-up focus groups, we provide implications about the occurrence of the clusters in enterprises and on further EAM development options

Delivering effective care through mobile apps:Findings from a multi-stakeholder design science approach

In this paper, we use a design science approach to develop a mobile app for lung cancer patients that facilitates their interactions with their clinicians, manages and reports on their health status, and provides them access to medical information/education. This paper contributes to the information systems literature by demonstrating the value of design science research to co-create solutions that advance health care outcomes through technological innovations. The design process engaged a diverse cast of experts and methods, such as a survey of oncologists and cancer patients, a workshop, roundtables and interviews with leading patient and clinician association representatives and focus groups, including two panels each of clinicians and cancer patients. Our approach also develops actionable knowledge that is grounded in evidence from the field, including design guidelines that recapitulate what we learned from the design-testing-redesign cycles of our artefact

An e-mail embedded software prototype for knowledge management

Against the backdrop of today’s knowledge economy and a strong pervasion of e-mail in enterprises, the paper at hand presents an e-mail embedded software prototype for knowledge management. Although information systems literature esteems the research field of e-mail- related knowledge management as phenomenon, few contributions have been made in artifact- based and problem-oriented research. As existing software applications lack in specificity and currency, a tailored information technology artifact grounded on the unique characteristics of e- mail has been developed in a joint university-industry project following the design science research methodology. “Memoro” facilitates knowledge capture/creation and knowledge sharing/dissemination. Core functionality is the lightweight storage and extraction of e-mail- related information to and from a central repository. With the limitation of a customized prototype, first evaluation results indicate that integrating knowledge management into the daily e-mail routine enables knowledge-intensive businesses to deal with their knowledge in more effective and efficient ways. From a research perspective, “Memoro” might serve scholars as origin for further research. We contribute to the body of knowledge by providing (1) an early version of an innovative design artifact and (2) a concept-centric literature review

SenseCluster for exploring large data repositories

Exploring and making sense of large data repositories has become a daunting task. This is especially the case for end users who often have limited access to the data due to the complexity of the retrieval process and limited availability of IT support for developing custom queries and reports based on the data. Consequently, traditional interfaces are no longer meeting these requirements. Instead, novel interfaces are required to fully support the sense making process. In this paper, we followed a design science approach and introduced a query clustering system (Sense Cluster) that could serve as a quick exploration tool for making better sense of large data repositories. We also present an evaluation of the effectiveness of our artifact using cognitive walkthroughs

Designer? User? Player! – A Framework of Opportunities to Improve Interpersonal Dynamics During Usability Testing Through Gamification

Usability testing is an important technique in the design process. However, most existing research takes usability testing as a research method, not as the research topic itself. This paper explores the relationships and the interpersonal dynamics between participants and researchers during usability testing. In this study, we use interviews and observations to uncover the interpersonal dynamics that might be hidden in the complex multilevel structure of the testing process. Our findings suggest that interpersonal dynamics impact the testing experience and results: participants in a nervous or tense atmosphere may not perform as in real life or conceal their real thoughts. To improve the usability testing experience and results, we developed a framework of opportunities for improving the interpersonal dynamics through gamification

COMPETENCE-BASED MODEL FOR SECURING THE IN-TERNET OF THINGS IN ORGANIZATIONS

The next generation in computing transcends the paradigm of traditional desktop and client-server ar-chitectures. IT products and solutions of the third platform, specifically in the scope of the Internet of Things (IoT) raise new security threats and vulnerabilities, suggesting that a set of competences is needed for any IoT product or service, regarding information security. The knowledge of that set of skills allows top managers to properly assess current organizational competences against future re-quirements, allowing proper business realignment. The paper at hand aims to contribute to the topic state of the art both at academic and practical level by developing a Competence-based Model for Securing the Internet of Things. The construction of the Model aims to define and develop organizational competence, specifically in the context of organiza-tions that are IoT service providers. The model, to be developed and empirically tested using the Design Science Paradigm, will be based on an existing model that defines competence from a strategic management perspective using Resource Based View theory, strategic management theory and the concept of collective mind as heedful interre-lating