A Three Cycle View of Design Science Research

As a commentary to Juhani Iivari’s insightful essay, I briefly analyze design science research as an embodiment of three closely related cycles of activities. The Relevance Cycle inputs requirements from the contextual environment into the research and introduces the research artifacts into environmental field testing. The Rigor Cycle provides grounding theories and methods along with domain experience and expertise from the foundations knowledge base into the research and adds the new knowledge generated by the research to the growing knowledge base. The central Design Cycle supports a tighter loop of research activity for the construction and evaluation of design artifacts and processes. The recognition of these three cycles in a research project clearly positions and differentiates design science from other research paradigms. The commentary concludes with a claim to the pragmatic nature of design science

A four-cycle model of IS design science research: capturing the dynamic nature of IS artifact design

We propose to extend the well-known three-cycle view for design science research (DSR) with a fourth cycle (change and impact cycle) that captures the dynamic nature of IS artifact design for volatile environments. The appropriation of in-innovative designs results in organizational changes that happen outside the new artifacts' immediate application contexts. The intention behind introducing the fourth cycle is to integrate recent advances in the DSR discourse conceptually within the DSR cycle model. We critically review such recent advances and integrate them into an extended model. We show how this change and impact (CI) cycle adds an important facet to DSR to cope with dynamic application contexts as well as artifact-induced organizational change and the resulting need for follow-up design efforts. Iterations of the CI cycle represent the continuous design evolution required to keep up with changing organizational environments

Effectuation and its implications for socio-technical design science research in information systems

We study the implications of the effectuation concept for socio-technical artifact design as part of the design science research (DSR) process in information systems (IS). Effectuation logic is the opposite of causal logic. Ef-fectuation does not focus on causes to achieve a particular effect, but on the possibilities that can be achieved with extant means and resources. Viewing so-cio-technical IS DSR through an effectuation lens highlights the possibility to design the future even without set goals. We suggest that effectuation may be a useful perspective for design in dynamic social contexts leading to a more dif-ferentiated view on the instantiation of mid-range artifacts for specific local ap-plication contexts. Design science researchers can draw on this paper’s conclu-sions to view their DSR projects through a fresh lens and to reexamine their re-search design and execution. The paper also offers avenues for future research to develop more concrete application possibilities of effectuation in socio-technical IS DSR and, thus, enrich the discourse

Introduction to the AIS THCI Special Issue on Design Research in Human-Computer Interaction

Design Research (DR) creates, builds, and evaluates innovative artifacts such as constructs, models, methods, and instantiations as well as operational information systems. It also investigates approaches, methods, behaviors, and processes related to design. Although the design research paradigm as an engineering approach in Information Systems (IS) research has been actively discussed in recent years (Hevner et al., 2004), comparatively little design related research has made its way into the IS community by means of widely recognized and outstanding publications. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Research is concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks; especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts (Zhang et al., 2002). Despite the realization that it is important for HCI research to focus on all issues that occur along the lifecycles of any information and communication technology (ICT) artifacts, IS scholars have traditionally put less effort into the design and development stage and more effort into the use and impact stage (Zhang and Li, 2005; Zhang et al., 2009)

Team Synergy in Software Inspections: A Group Behavior Analysis

Inspections provide many benefits in the software development process. However, the cost effectiveness of inspections has been criticized. Also, many organizations simply do not have the time to perform complete inspections of all software artifacts within the development schedule. Due to its pragmatic and domain-specific nature, little formal research has been performed on inspections. We propose to begin a study of software development inspections by surveying several relevant research papers on group behavior theory. We applythis research to inspections and outline a laboratory experiment for future researc

A Proficiency Model for Design Science Research Education

Design science research (DSR) produces knowledge via the design and evaluation of innovative solutions to real-world problems. DSR provides an improved understanding of how and why the solutions work. While DSR is being widely embraced in many research disciplines, its educational pedagogy so far remains immature with little guidance on how best to inform and train various audiences on relevant and rigorous DSR skillsets. Grounded on the authors’ wide experience in designing and delivering DSR courses over the past decades, we develop a “DSR Proficiency Model” to highlight key skills required to succeed in planning, applying, and communicating DSR. We recognize the different educational environments and student backgrounds that DSR courses must accommodate and provide actionable guidance for mapping the proficiency model to academic, training, and executive audiences. Informative examples demonstrate how we have structured DSR curricula for different academic and executive education programs

Editorial Statement: Information Technology and Systems (ITS) Department

This paper introduces the Information and Technology Systems (ITS) Department of CAIS. The department focuses on articles in design science. The goal of design-science research is the development and evaluation of technologies that extend the boundaries of human and organizational information-processing capabilities. Research must demonstrate the utility of such technologies to address problems or tasks not previously thought to be amenable to IT support. The article presents the objectives, concepts, and publication procedures for the ITS Department

Planning a portfolio of controls for software development

A growing number of software development projects successfully exhibit a mix of agile and traditional software development methodologies. Many of these mixed methodologies are organization specific and tailored to a specific project. Our objective in this research-in-progress paper is to develop an artifact that can guide the development of such a mixed methodology. Using control theory, we design a process model that provides theoretical guidance to build a portfolio of controls that can support the development of a mixed methodology for software development. Controls, embedded in methods, provide a generalizable and adaptable framework for project managers to develop their mixed methodology specific to the demands of the project. A research methodology is proposed to test the model. Finally, future directions and contributions are discussed

The Design of a System for Online Psychosocial Care: Balancing Privacy and Accountability in Sensitive Online Healthcare Environments

The design of sensitive online healthcare systems must balance the requirements of privacy and accountability for the good of individuals, organizations, and society. Via a design science research approach, we build and evaluate a sophisticated software system for the online provision of psychosocial healthcare to distributed and vulnerable populations. Multidisciplinary research capabilities are embedded within the system to investigate the effectiveness of online treatment protocols. Throughout the development cycles of the system, we build an emergent design theory of scrutiny that applies a multi-layer protocol to support governance of privacy and accountability in sensitive online applications. The design goal is to balance stakeholder privacy protections with the need to provide for accountable interventions in critical and well-defined care situations. The research implications for the development and governance of online applications in numerous privacy-sensitive application areas are explore