The Effects of the Quantification of Faculty Productivity: Perspectives from the Design Science Research Community

In recent years, efforts to assess faculty research productivity have focused more on the measurable quantification of academic outcomes. For benchmarking academic performance, researchers have developed different ranking and rating lists that define so-called high-quality research. While many scholars in IS consider lists such as the Senior Scholar’s basket (SSB) to provide good guidance, others who belong to less-mainstream groups in the IS discipline could perceive these lists as constraining. Thus, we analyzed the perceived impact of the SSB on information systems (IS) academics working in design science research (DSR) and, in particular, how it has affected their research behavior. We found the DSR community felt a strong normative influence from the SSB. We conducted a content analysis of the SSB and found evidence that some of its journals have come to accept DSR more. We note the emergence of papers in the SSB that outline the role of theory in DSR and describe DSR methodologies, which indicates that the DSR community has rallied to describe what to expect from a DSR manuscript to the broader IS community and to guide the DSR community on how to organize papers for publication in the SSB

Dilemas iniciais na investigação em TSI: design science e design research, uma clarificação de conceitos

A inter-disciplinariedade dos sistemas de informação, disciplina aplicada e actividade de design, e o estudo sob o prisma de diferentes paradigmas traduz-se numa diversidade dos problemas abordados. O seu contexto é amplo e inclui questões importantes para além da tecnologia, como a aplicação, uso, eficácia, eficiência e seus impactos organizacionais e sociais. Enquanto design science, o interesse da investigação está na contribuição para a melhoria dos processos da própria actividade de design. A relevância da investigação em design science está associada ao resultado obtido para a melhoria das condições de vida em contexto organizacional, inter-organizacional e na Sociedade. Na investigação cujos resultados são artefactos, a adopção do design research, enquanto processo de investigação, é crucial para garantir disciplina, rigor e transparência. Baseado numa revisão de literatura, este artigo clarifica os termos design science e design research. Esta é a principal motivação para a apresentação deste artigo, determinante para a fase de investigação em tecnologias e sistemas de informação em que se encontram os três projectos de investigação apresentados. Como resultado, são discutidos os três projectos face aos conceitos de design science e design research.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Artifact and/or Theory? Publishing Design Science Research in IS

With the rising interest in Design Science Research (DSR), it has become crucial to understand what the acceptable components of a DSR paper are, in order to get published. Central to this is the ongoing debate on what constitutes an acceptable contribution in DSR - the artifact, the design theory or both? Two camps have emerged in this debate, and this panel is setup to engage thought leaders from both sides in a scholarly discourse. At the end, we aim to have moved a step towards collectively charting a path for the future of Design Science in the IS discipline

Paving the Way for Enriched Patient Experience - On the Development of a Process Architecture for a Hospital

In this emergent research forum (ERF) paper, we report on a project from a state-funded hospital located in one of Europe’s microstates. The hospital is currently planning a new building site and, in addition, plans to adopt new information technologies (IT) to improve patient safety and enrich the patient journey. However, the hospital lacks a systematic overview of its processes and their interrelationships as a basis for further BPM initiatives and, most importantly, improving the patient experience from admission to discharge and beyond. By applying a design science research (DSR) approach, we develop the first draft of a process architecture by considering a patient’s journey. We discuss this framework and present the next steps as part of our future research

Frei Otto’s Pneumatic Experiments for Humanitarian Design

This paper will explore the intersection of building technology and humanitarian design-science research by looking at Frei Otto’s pneumatic experiments. The purpose of the study is to contextualize our contemporary demands for humanitarian design work by reflecting upon the manner by which Otto integrated an ambitious design ideology with an elevated and innovative technical acumen. Constraining the investigation to Otto’s work, particularly his relatively unknown early work with pneus, provides a useful exploration of design-science approach that connect design and technology—an approach that is useful to understand for contemporary pedagogical applications. Otto himself connected his career to humanitarian work. Shortly before his death in 2015, Frei Otto vowed to, “…use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity.” The paper will explore the complicated manner by which Otto’s design and research contributed towards humanitarian design (or not), both in process and content. Although Otto’s desire to “build light and keep mobile” can be applicable for relief and recovery structures, he intended it more broadly. His operational ideology for lightweight structures sought to connect design, nature, and humanity; but his design-research work was intentionally acontextual. Instead of producing a particular product building, he explored a realm of structural typologies to determine how forms and construction could be leveraged to help address a myriad of other humanitarian issues. The work wasn’t intended explicitly to intervene in traditional humanitarian relief or recovery efforts. However, at the earliest stages of his career, his book, Tensile Structures, Volume 1 (1962), Otto’s included hundreds of proposals for innovations in pneumatic structures, many that seemed explicitly created to address various humanitarian needs of food, water, infrastructure, and shelter for inhospitable locations. The paper will show the connections between the design intentions and technical explorations that led to this innovative pneumatic proposals (many as yet, unrealized). The manner by which the work was conceived and studied is relevant to our contemporary concerns in practice and pedagogy so the paper will concluded with observations and recommendations for connections that can be made

Design Science Research: Paradigm or Approach?

Due to the significant increase of theoretical evaluation of software prototypes, design science research (DSR) as a new research direction has emerged in recent years with the aim to ensure for both, rigor and relevance in prototyping research projects. On the one hand, a theoretical background ensures a usable and professional software prototype and on the other hand, new and innovative software prototypes provide rich data for theory testing and evaluating. DSR has proven to produce practically relevant research results but unfortunately it is still not a fully accepted research approach since it has somehow failed to develop theoretical contributions. Nevertheless, we believe that design science research is an important key factor for a new and innovative research paradigm. This paper provides an overview of DSR and tries to combine both, rigor and relevance, in a unified perception

L'approche du design science au cœur du débat rigueur / pertinence

International audienceL'objectif de cet article est de mettre en lumière l'approche du 'design science' qui connaît aujourd'hui un intérêt grandissant de nombreuses revues et conférences européennes et américaines. Peu utilisé à l'heure actuelle dans les travaux francophones, nous avons choisi d'éclairer cette approche en approfondissant à la fois ces apports mais aussi ces limites dans un débat qui anime la communauté SI, le débat rigueur/pertinence

A Specification for Designing Requirement Prioritization Artifacts

The importance of prioritizing requirements stems from the fact that not all requirements can usually be met with available time and resource constraints. Although several papers have been published in this domain, they mainly focus on descriptive research endeavors to suggest different requirement prioritization approaches. Prescriptive research dealing with design science for a systematic and holistic understanding of the prioritization process is still scarce. The gap motivates our research, which aims at arriving at a set of design principles that explains the form and function of software requirement prioritization artifacts. We resort to a non-experimental approach using content analysis to identify and analyze articles on requirement prioritization published up to 2009 in order to arrive at the set of initial design principles. This subsequently is evaluated based on expert feedbacks. We close the paper by indicating our research continuation plans, and highlighting issues for future considerations