Desing Canvas for the Design Canvas

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Martin Scheid

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peter.fettke@iwi.dfki.de

Description

Design Canvas

Justificationary Knowledge

Due to the far-reaching adaptation of Design Science in the Information Systems field, it is surprising that the there is no computer-aided tool that help researchers document and manage the research process - taking into account the focus the field places on the development of targeted IT artifacts. Additionally, there is no model to provide a framework for the intuitive planning of DSR projects.

Problem

DSR projects are typically complex and require a wide range of competences which need to be combined and managed. This range reaches from pure software developers to project managers which do not need to know code but require a broad overview across the whole project. Additionally, this management and project work need a bunch of software tools for different tasks, e.g. Code-Management and Project-Management Tools. MDP can be used in combination with the prescribed tools to ensure the scientific significance in DSR.

Objective

Support researchers to perform good DSR, especially the Design Canvas focusses on two points: (1) Planning and Constructing DSR and (2) Communicate the results of DSR research projects in order to fulfill the communication task of DSR.

Idea

The idea of the Design Canvas is to create an intuitive and simple to use overview of the given DSR project which can be understand without domain knowledge. This point results from objective (1). The second objective leads to the second idea to provide an easy to use model which allows to communicate the results or the devel-opment stage of DSR projects. To do so the idea of a canvas model was adopted to the field of DSR. Furthermore, the Design Canvas should be implemented inside the DSR tool, MDP.

Context

Here the Portrait of Design Essence (PDE) is an example which a similar focus on the creation a simple overview which covers the most important things. But PDE is restricted to a single page where the Design Canvas all to use more space but is limited to the given structure.

Scope
Design Process

In this project the DSR process according to Peffers will be followed as an example for the design-process-templates which are available in MDP. This Process consists of six steps, starting with the identification of the problem and the motivation (i), the definition of objectives of a solution (ii), the design and development of the solution (iii), the demonstration of the solution (iv), the evaluation of the solution and the followed research paradigm (v) and at last the communication of the project results (vi).

Evaluation

This evaluation consists of two evaluation tasks, the evaluation of the prototype and the evaluation of the underlying research method and research process. For the evaluation of the prototype different kinds of test can be conducted in for the design canvas we evaluate using workshops in different conferences and studies taken at the universities of the authors. These tests allow to identify potential shortcomings as well as finding software bugs in the implementation of MDP.

Method
Artifact

The Design Canvas, describes a design science process from the start with the “Justification knowledge” to the end of the DSR process with the “Design Knowledge”. The process consists of the start and end building blocks and seven intermediate building blocks. The intermediate blocks contain the considerations which must be consulted during the realization of the grounded design science project. The fields are categorized in three layers: “Scope”, “Method” and “Result”. Each layer contains the corresponding blocks. The scope-layer includes the basic tasks of a DSR process and defines the field where the project is located. The “Problem” block contains the formulation of the identified problem. This problem should be as clear as possible and demark the field of research. The “Objective” block includes the statement how the problem can be tackled using DSR. The content of the third building block, “Idea”, describes the basic idea how the objective of the project can be reached. Furthermore, the last scope-block determines the “Context” where the problem is located, to define the domain the problem is located. The next group of building blocks is categorized as “Method”-blocks. All blocks in this part describe the method which should be used to reach the objective of the project. The first block “Design Process” describes which design process should be used for the project. This can be one of the given approaches which are also available in MDP (as templates, see section 3.1). As mentioned in the previous section this field can be edited freely to keep a maximum of flexibility to edit the process and custom-ize available DSR processes for the specific project needs. The “Evaluation”-block should describe the evaluation method which is used for the project, method and artifact evaluation. To du so, several methods like the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) [13] and the appropriate single items are possible evaluation methods for the design project. The last category contains the “Result” of the conducted DSR project. In DSR this is the so called “Artifact” this can be e.g. a software prototype or even a model for something which solves the problem descripted in “Problem”. At the end of the process the gathered “Design Knowledge”, so everything useful learned during the process is summarized in this last building block. The Design Canvas provides an overview over the whole DS process allows a fast and easy overview over the project. Additionally, it can be used to evaluate given projects and ideate for new projects. To do so and evaluate the Design Canvas we redocumented 3 projects in the DSR field.

Result
Design Knowledge

Specifically, our retrospective analysis has shown that, in most cases, it will complement rather than substitute the use of other tools, most notably for the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. Besides, our evaluation is retrospective, and it will be interesting to see what we learn from the application of DSR support tools in novel projects that use such tools from the outset.

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