The Notion of Users in Design Science Research

Abstract

Design Science Research (DSR) has since the last decade become a paradigm within the field of Information Systems (IS). It provides researchers and practitioners within IS with a rich set of tools in terms of methods, theoretical foundations, research validity and other characteristics. This paper investigates what the notion of users is in DSR. It presents results from a small literature review based on 31 DSR-papers. The results indicate a low presence of how DSR-papers conceptualize the concept of users. The paper suggests that DSR hasn’t reached it’s full potentialities in terms of positioning an explicit notion of users, and that it can be a relevant task for further research for IS-researchers in general, and for DSR-researchers in particular