Guidelines for conducting design science research in information systems

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) as a discipline is still young and is continuously involved in building its own research knowledge base. Design Science Research (DSR) in IS is a research strategy for design that has emerged in the last 16 years. Junior IS researchers are often lost when they start with a project in DSR. We identified a need for a set of guidelines with supporting reference literature that can assist such novice adopters of DSR. We identified major themes relevant to DSR and proposed a set of six guidelines for the novice researcher supported with references summaries of seminal works from the IS DSR literature. We believe that someone new to the field can use these guidelines to prepare him/herself to embark on a DSR study.