Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Australasian Journal of Information Systems

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Abstract

Although an improvement of design knowledge is an essential goal of design research, current design research predominantly focuses on knowledge concerning the IT artifact (tool) design process, rather than a more holistic understanding encompassing the dynamic usage contexts of a technological artifact. Conceptualising a design in context as an "ensemble artifact" (Sein et al., 2011) provides the basis for a more rigorous treatment. This paper describes an IS artifact design framework that has been generated from the development of several practitioner-oriented decision support systems (DSS) in which contextual aspects relevant to practitioners' decision making are considered as integral design themes. We describe five key dimensions of an ensemble artifact design and show their value in designing practitioner-oriented DSS. The features are user centredness, knowledge sharing, situation-specific customisation, reduced model orientation, and practice based secondary design abilities. It is argued that this understanding can contribute to design research knowledge more effectively both to develop dynamic DSS, and by its extensibility to other artifact designs.

ISSN

1039-7841

Publisher

Deakin University, School of Information Systems

Volume

18

Issue

2

First Page

5

Last Page

20

Disciplines

Computer Sciences

Keywords

Design science research, DSS, Ensemble artifact, Ensemble view, IS artifact, User-centredness

Scopus ID

84903528417

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series

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