Tensions in design principle formulation and reuse

Designing can be viewed as a collective activity that accumulates and reuses knowledge over time and, in the information systems field, such knowledge often takes the form of design principles. While design principles are now a predominant from to capture, accumulate, and reuse design knowledge, their reusability cannot be taken for granted. In this paper, we present the preliminary findings of an ongoing series of experiments that aim to explore the characteristics of design principles that facilitate or inhibit their reuse. Our preliminary findings suggest that, interestingly, these characteristics occur as contradicting elements. We situate the tensions in the light of hermeneutics, expert intuition, and C-K design theory. We hope that, through our ongoing work, we can trigger further discussion on design principles reuse in the DSR community

Portraying Design Essence

Recent discourse in the Design Science Research community addresses the necessity to accumulate and reuse design knowledge. However, design methods are complex and so are the traditional ways to document design knowledge. Inspired by the high business and academic impact of Business Model Canvas, we argue that a single-page portrayal of nine design elements can help designers to capture design knowledge and eventually share it with other designers. This paper reports on our attempt to create, demonstrate, and evaluate an instance of such tools, one that we call the Portrait of Design Essence

The Beauty of Messiness: A Flexible Tool for Design Principle Projects

Abstracting and formalizing knowledge collected throughout a design science research (DSR) project is important to inform the design of future artifacts. Design principles are one of the prevailing forms to capture design-relevant knowledge and guide both research and practice to build new artifacts. Although today’s DSR projects are often agile and creative, they require a minimum structure to ensure rigor. In this paper, we set out to master the tradeoff between creative messiness and fully standardized design endeavors by presenting a situational tool in the form of a card deck. We report on the building of a design tool and its demonstration via two illustrative examples. Overall, we complement the valuable body of DSR frameworks and introduce a flexible and configurable tool capable of taking into account specific project situations

Sharing Leadership through Digital Collaborative Objects

This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of collaborative tools and objects in the emergence and support of shared leadership, which has been associated with positive team dy-namics and innovative outcomes. We draw on ideas from the recent discourse on viewing lead-ership as a practice that involves human actors and material or technological tools to provide the first analysis of the features of collaborative tools that can support shared leadership. We present our early findings and insights from a multiple case study of ten innovation teams in their interaction with a collaborative tool that is particularly designed for coordination. We suggest that collaborative tools can contribute to shared leadership through two facilitating fea-tures: shared problem space and shared visualisation. Through our findings, we highlight the role of collaborative tools in supporting teams in sharing leadership for the purpose of joint in-novation

Research Perspectives: The Anatomy of a Design Principle

This essay derives a schema for specifying design principles for information technology-based artifacts in sociotechnical systems. Design principles are used to specify design knowledge in an accessible form, but there is wide variation and lack of precision across views regarding their formulation. This variation is a sign of important issues that should be addressed, including a lack of attention to human actors and levels of complexity as well as differing views on causality, on the nature of the mechanisms used to achieve goals, and on the need for justificatory knowledge. The new schema includes the well-recognized elements of design principles, including goals in a specific context and the mechanisms to achieve the goal. In addition, the schema allows: (1) consideration of the varying roles of the human actors involved and the utility of design principles, (2) attending to the complexity of IT-based artifacts through decomposition, (3) distinction of the types of causation (i.e., deterministic versus probabilistic), (4) a variety of mechanisms in achieving aims, and (5) the optional definition of justificatory knowledge underlying the design principles. We illustrate the utility of the proposed schema by applying it to examples of published research

How Designers Use Design Principles: Design Behaviors and Application Modes

This paper investigates how information systems design professionals use design principles (extracted from a prior design science research project) in a new design situation. We do this by capturing think-aloud protocols from experienced design professionals who are given access to potentially useful design principles. Our analysis identifies two dimensions of use: design behaviors (what designers do) and application modes (how designers apply the principles). Mapping across the dimensions suggests two use pathways: forward chaining and backward chaining. Our study shows how empirically studying expert designers can shed light on the microprocesses of design principles in use, and how an empirical turn in the investigation can contribute to clarifying the fundamental nature of design principles. We conclude by highlighting the implications of these insights for crafting more useful design principles

Research Perspectives: The Anatomy of a Design Principle

This essay derives a schema for specifying design principles for information technology-based artifacts in sociotechnical systems. Design principles are used to specify design knowledge in an accessible form, but there is wide variation and lack of precision across views regarding their formulation. This variation is a sign of important issues that should be addressed, including a lack of attention to human actors and levels of complexity as well as differing views on causality, on the nature of the mechanisms used to achieve goals, and on the need for justificatory knowledge. The new schema includes the well-recognized elements of design principles, including goals in a specific context and the mechanisms to achieve the goal. In addition, the schema allows: (1) consideration of the varying roles of the human actors involved and the utility of design principles, (2) attending to the complexity of IT-based artifacts through decomposition, (3) distinction of the types of causation (i.e., deterministic versus probabilistic), (4) a variety of mechanisms in achieving aims, and (5) the optional definition of justificatory knowledge underlying the design principles. We illustrate the utility of the proposed schema by applying it to examples of published researc

Understanding the Digital Companions of Our Future Generation

The main protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel is Klara, an artificial friend whose existential goal is to be children’s companion. Some aspects of this fictional narrative have begun to gradually enter our daily lives. Products reminiscent of Klara are available abundantly on the market: smart toys, adaptive learning applications, and companion robots. Children can relate to these products and perform activities together with them. Preliminary research has shown fundamental differences between existing technologies and these emerging children’s digital companions. However, we still do not know much about their benefits and risks. This paper explores different and even contradicting perspectives on the phenomenon. We present the discussion from four perspectives - temporality, use, trust and ethics, and sociotechnical design - and conclude the paper with an agenda for interdisciplinary IS research. The agenda points to the needs for a psychological, medical, engineering, and temporal research community to understand this emerging sociotechnical phenomenon and design its future for the better

Climate Change and COP26: Are Digital Technologies and Information Management Part of the Problem or the Solution? An Editorial Reflection and Call to Action

The UN COP26 2021 conference on climate change offers the chance for world leaders to take action and make urgent and meaningful commitments to reducing emissions and limit global temperatures to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Whilst the political aspects and subsequent ramifications of these fundamental and critical decisions cannot be underestimated, there exists a technical perspective where digital and IS technology has a role to play in the monitoring of potential solutions, but also an integral element of climate change solutions. We explore these aspects in this editorial article, offering a comprehensive opinion based insight to a multitude of diverse viewpoints that look at the many challenges through a technology lens. It is widely recognized that technology in all its forms, is an important and integral element of the solution, but industry and wider society also view technology as being part of the problem. Increasingly, researchers are referencing the importance of responsible digitalization to eliminate the significant levels of e-waste. The reality is that technology is an integral component of the global efforts to get to net zero, however, its adoption requires pragmatic tradeoffs as we transition from current behaviors to a more climate friendly society

Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action

The UN COP26 2021 conference on climate change offers the chance for world leaders to take action and make urgent and meaningful commitments to reducing emissions and limit global temperatures to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Whilst the political aspects and subsequent ramifications of these fundamental and critical decisions cannot be underestimated, there exists a technical perspective where digital and IS technology has a role to play in the monitoring of potential solutions, but also an integral element of climate change solutions. We explore these aspects in this editorial article, offering a comprehensive opinion based insight to a multitude of diverse viewpoints that look at the many challenges through a technology lens. It is widely recognized that technology in all its forms, is an important and integral element of the solution, but industry and wider society also view technology as being part of the problem. Increasingly, researchers are referencing the importance of responsible digitalization to eliminate the significant levels of e-waste. The reality is that technology is an integral component of the global efforts to get to net zero, however, its adoption requires pragmatic tradeoffs as we transition from current behaviors to a more climate friendly society.</p