Roland M. Mueller

• Prof. Dr.
• Professor (Full) at Berlin School of Economics and Law

Researchers must ensure that the claims about the knowledge produced by their work are valid. However, validity is neither well-understood nor consistently established in design science, which involves the development and evaluation of artifacts (models, methods, instantiations, and theories) to solve problems. As a result, it is challenging to dem...

The process of conducting scientific literature reviews is becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming due to the rapid expansion of available research. Popular academic search engines offer limited filtering capabilities and suffer from low precision. Machine learning-enhanced approaches tend to target rather specific areas, and novel approac...

The process of creating and maintaining domain ontologies is a time- and resource-intensive activity, given the dynamic nature of domain knowledge and the regular introduction of new terms. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of large language models (LLMs) in augmenting the domain ontology authoring process. We fine-tuned state-of-the-a...

This paper suggests a new way of comparing and analyzing causal theories. The main contribution is a meta-model that represents causal theories and a taxonomy of inter-theory relationships. The inter-theory relationships can be automatically calculated for two theories that are described with the meta-model. Two visualizations are presented with wh...

This article analyzes two different strategies that both aim at creating innovative design or business concepts based on a user-centered approach: design thinking and lean startup. Both approaches involve customers, potential users, or other stakeholders into their development process. Although there are significant differences in both strategies,...

We present a framework for ontology-based knowledge synthesis from research articles to support researchers in conducting literature reviews and gaining comprehensive insights into the state of the Information Systems discipline. Building on calls for an academic knowledge infrastructure, we performed a design science research project to (1) develo...

The traditional process of conducting literature reviews requires a significant amount of manual work and is often constrained by the limitations of small sample sizes. Although novel computational approaches to language analysis offer great opportunities, they are rarely applied to literature reviews. We aim to demonstrate the potential of ontolog...

The paper emphasizes the need to consider negative aspects of creativity, especially in design, where it can have significant societal impacts. It calls for a more comprehensive view of creativity that includes both positive and negative effects and proposes a research approach to assess the potential negative consequences of creative work.

This paper presents a mapping of theory use in the design discipline based on the corpus of the published ICED and DESIGN conference papers since 2010. We searched the resulting 4,451 papers for occurrences of theories and compared them with an existing ontology of named theories through natural language processing (NLP). The results yielded a vari...

In the Information Systems (IS) discipline, central contributions of research projects are often represented in graphical research models, clearly illustrating constructs and their relationships. Although thousands of such representations exist, methods for extracting this source of knowledge are still in an early stage. We present a method for (1)...

Generative AI algorithms that are able to generate creative output are progressing at tremendous speed. This paper presents a research agenda for Generative AI-based support for designers. We present examples of existing applications and thus illustrate the possible application space of Generative AI reflecting the current state of this technology....

Due to the immense growth of collected data and advancing big data technologies, there are countless potential use cases of data and analytics. But most data initiatives fail and do not bring the desired outcome. One essential reason for this situation is the lack of a systematic approach to evaluate and select promising analytics use cases. This s...

Question Answering (QA) systems can significantly reduce manual effort of searching for relevant information. However, challenges arise from a lack of domain-specificity and the fact that QA systems usually retrieve answers from short text passages instead of long scientific articles. We aim to address these challenges by (1) exploring the use of t...

We introduce the Information Systems Ontology (ISO), a new ontology for the Information Systems (IS) discipline designed to enable automated knowledge synthesis and meta-analysis of research findings in IS. We constructed ISO in a methodical manner, following known best practices for ontology construction. We also conducted a series of ontology ref...

The theoretical understanding of design knowledge is a crucial concern for research in the design discipline. This article extends the rich existing research on design knowledge by providing a unifying model of design knowledge. The insights are derived from a rigorous review of existing literature. The resulting model presents an original framewor...

Due to the growing importance of data-driven innovation, multiple streams of literature that offer varying definitions and frameworks for using data and analytics in innovation have emerged. This eventually resulted in synonymously used terminology and overlapping concepts leading to a lack of clarity and transparency. This paper investigates diffe...

Research in design science has always acknowledged the need for evaluating its knowledge outcomes, with particular emphasis on assessing the efficacy and utility of the artifacts produced. However, the need to demonstrate the validity of the research process and outcomes has not received as much attention. This research examines scientific approach...

The term “creative space” describes a relatively recent phenomenon of innovative workplace design. Such creative workspaces are becoming popular in industry and academia. However, the impact of specific spatial design decisions on creativity and innovation is not yet fully understood. This paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on...

Research in design science has always acknowledged the need for evaluating its knowledge outcomes, with particular emphasis on assessing the efficacy and utility of the artifacts produced. However, the need to demonstrate the validity of the research process and outcomes has not received as much attention. This research examines scientific approach...

This paper looks at the positive effects of partial status anonymity in face-to-face co-creation workshops. Results suggest that especially during the early phases of co-creation, i.e. idea generation, participants experience more freedom to express themselves without self-imposed barriers. We observed positive effects in terms of (1) lowering or e...

This paper compares two pioneering design educational approaches: the historic Bauhaus school founded in 1919 in Germany, and contemporary design thinking education, based on the example of the “HPI School of Design Thinking”. We compare both approaches according to six emerging categories: (1) curriculum, (2) multi-disciplinarity, (3) mind-set and...

Workshops are often used in the information systems (IS) and design fields to evaluate artifacts or to co-create business innovations. However, the evaluation of workshops is often conducted in a rather unsystematic and heterogenous way. This paper introduces a set of guidelines for designing or evaluating artifacts through workshops. These guideli...

The design of the workspace can be an indicator for an organization’s innovation culture. This paper introduces a canvas-based collaboration tool that facilitates both, team-based analysis of existing workspaces regarding the expressed culture, and co-creating spatial design ideas with the goal to instigate a cultural change. This two-way approach...

Digitization, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence along with Big Data lead to more and more data-driven innovations. However, companies often lack the knowledge, skills, and experience about the potentials of data and its related technologies. Consequently, they might struggle to manage the related complexity when designing data-driven pr...

Validity is among the most foundational and widely used concepts in science. Much has been written on the subject, yet, we continue to lack established definitions of research validities. This paper presents preliminary results for developing a general ontology of research validity. In this paper, we assembled the largest data set of validities and...

This research investigates the use of deep convolutional neural networks for racing bib number recognition in sport images. As labelled images of racing bib numbers are scarce, this paper investigates the potential benefits of transfer learning, by training models partly and fully on the Street View House Numbers (SVHN) dataset. Several deep neural...

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorize...

Creative workspaces are becoming popular in many organizations. They are believed to support innovation efforts and creativity among employees. This paper presents spatial evidences of creative work environments from real-life organizations, based on an exploratory multi-case study in 18 institutions. The found workspaces were mapped and categorize...

Designerly innovation tools, such as canvases, are widely used for facilitating team and collaboration processes. This paper outlines the potential design space of such innovation canvases. Based on a systematic analysis of 123 existing canvases we developed a morphological box that distinguishes between six different parameters identified as relev...

At the fuzzy front end of innovation emerging ideas are often fuzzy as well. This may lead to premature rejection of those early ideas and hence result in missed business opportunities. This paper introduces the Idea Arc—a canvas-based innovation tool that facilitates team-based discussions, elaboration and refinement of an idea, identification of...

This article presents a longitudinal case study of the development process of an idea lab-from initial planning to final implementation and usage. The research approach comprised various methods, including a user study with cultural probes and a visual canvas, a focus group co-creation workshop, and a follow-up evaluation, two years after the space...

Work and study environments that facilitate creative design processes—so called creative spaces—have gained an increased interest in the past years. This paper contributes to this emerging field by providing a set of guidelines for creating such environments. We developed a set of 49 abstracted design principles (patterns) that are empirically deve...

Data literacy is the ability to use data productively and to think about it in a critically reflective way. However, can its complexity really be broken down to only this? Data literacy is one of the most important skills in the 21st century for organizations, employees, and citizens. We present a data literacy maturity model (DLMM) that was develo...

The number of scientific papers published each year is growing exponentially. How can computational tools support scientists to better understand and process this data? This paper presents a softwareprototype that automatically extracts causes, effects, signs, moderators, mediators, conditions, and interaction signs from propositions and hypotheses...

The physical environment in design education can have a significant impact on students' creativity, learning performance, and wellbeing. However, little attention is given to the question, how to design such spaces in a scientifically sound manner and how to involve the relevant stakeholders. Specifically, the future users of the space—students and...

Building on the assumption that the physical environment can have an influence on the creativity of designers and design students in particular, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical propositions and evidences for this relationship. We develop various propositions about the influence of physical environments on creativity, based on eight...

Building on the assumption that the physical environment can have an influence on the creativity of designers and design students in particular, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical propositions and evidences for this relationship. We develop various propositions about the influence of physical environments on creativity, based on eight...

Emotion measurement is a vital aspect for new product development and product improvements (see e.g. P. Desmet & Schifferstein, 2012). Nowadays, new technological devices, data mining, and social media offer many opportunities to invigorate design research. This paper tries to combine both aspects by exploring the question, how new technologies can...

Health care insurance fraud is a pressing problem, causing substantial and increasing costs in medical insurance programs. Due to large amounts of claims submitted, estimated at 5 billion per day, review of individual claims or providers is a difficult task. This encourages the employment of automated pre-payment controls and better post-payment de...

Design education involves various teaching, learning, and designing activities, such as idea generation, writing, sketching, computer-work, planning, lecturing and listening to presentations, team work, discussions, model making, and prototyping. All these activities require particular environments. The question how these activities could be facili...

The number of scientific publications has increased exponentially in the last decades. To better compare these ever-increasing results and to help further replication studies, the use of open data has been suggested. But how should empirical data be described? This paper presents a meta-model for empirical findings that is conceptually linked with...

This survey paper explores the opportunities and challenges of new technologies and social media for design research and design ethnography in particular, and summarizes the results in a framework. Understanding users’ needs and observing their behavioral patterns becomes more and more important when designing innovative products or services. Tradi...

This paper is part of a research project that investigates the role of the physical space, such as architecture, room layout, and furniture, on creative work processes in design educational contexts. The particular focus of this paper is to identify differences in the spatial requirements of designers in academia (students and educators) and design...

This paper presents a novel ethnographic research approach based on a wearable camera that automatically takes pictures according to sensor changes within the wearer’s environment. The opportunities and challenges that are raised by such technologies are investigated and discussed. We describe an exemplary application of the approach and point out...

Design thinking is a specific method to develop innovative solutions to wicked problems in multidisciplinary teams. The fact that people with different disciplinary and often also cultural backgrounds work together, makes it quite a challenge to compensate for deficits in common understanding of terminologies or mind-sets. Furthermore, team members...

The main goal of design education is to transfer design knowledge to students, and to foster the creation of new knowledge through design project work. The main facilitators of such knowledge transfer and creation are obviously the teachers, along with the supply of relevant literature. However, the role of the physical environment as a knowledge f...

Fraud, waste, and abuse in the U.S. healthcare system are estimated at $700 billion annually. Predictive analytics offers government and private payers the opportunity to identify and prevent or recover such billings. This paper proposes a data-driven method for fraud detection based on comparative research, fraud cases, and literature review. Unsu...

It is estimated that approximately $700 billion is lost due to fraud, waste, and abuse in the US healthcare system. Medicaid has been particularly susceptible target for fraud in recent years, with a distributed management model, limited cross-program communications, and a difficult-to-track patient population of low-income adults, their children,...

Business Intelligence R. Müller and H.-J. Lenz Springer Vieweg 2013 Inhaltsverzeichnis Abkürzungs- und Symbolverzeichnis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII 1 Einführung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Datenbereitstellung: DataWarehousing . . . . . . ....

Data Mining ist das semi-automatische Aufdecken von Mustern mittels Datenanalyse-Verfahren in meist sehr großen und hochdimensionalen Datenbeständen. Data Mining ist am besten mit Datenmustererkennung zu übersetzen, wobei sich dieser deutsche Begriff in der Praxis nicht durchsetzen konnte. Data Mining verbindet Methoden der Wissenschaftsbereiche St...

In diesem Kapitel betrachten wir eine Seite von Business Intelligence: die Datenbereitstellung. Die Verwendungseite, der Teil von BI also, der die Managementaufgaben unterstützt, wird in den folgenden Kap. 3 bis 5 behandelt. Unter Data Warehousing versteht man den Geschäftsprozess, der die Datenbeschaffung aus internen und extern zuganglichen Quell...

In den vorigen Kapiteln hatten wir uns mit der Bereitstellung von Daten und mit dem Data Mining befasst. In diesem Kapitel gehen wir auf die Methoden der Unternehmenssteuerung mithilfe von Business Intelligence ein, speziell auf quantitative Methoden. Die einzelnen Problembereiche, die vorgestellt werden, sind in der Abb. 4.1 veranschaulicht. Die A...

In den vorigen Kapiteln dieses Buches haben wir die verschiedenen Facetten des Business Intelligence kennengelernt. Nach einer Einführung in das Business Intelligence behandelten wir die Datenbereitstellung. Wir erörterten wie man eine geeignete Data Warehouse Architektur auswählt, wie man Daten aus verschiedenen Quellen integriert, welche Probleme...

In diesem Kapitel steht nach den Kapiteln über Datenbereitstellung, Data Mining und Methoden der Unternehmenssteuerung die für BI generische Aufgabe der Informationsverteilung im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Die Informationsverteilung stellt die Ergebnisse von Business Intelligence Analysen als Unternehmens-Berichte oder Ad-hoc Mitteilungen mittels...

In diesem Kapitel wenden wir uns zunächst im Abschn. 6.1 marktgängiger Software zu, die geeignet ist, Business Intelligence sowohl bei der Datenbereitstellung als auch beim Einsatz von quantitativen Verfahren der Datenanalyse zu unterstützen. Im zweiten Abschn. 6.2 werden die Anwendungsfelder von Business Intelligence genauer betrachtet, insbesonde...

Cultural Probes are facing an increasing popularity as a research method in design science and design research. However, the making of a cultural probes set requires a lot of time and resources for both, researcher and participant. A careful design of such cultural probes sets is crucial, to avoid waste of time and effort. But how do you design a g...

We present an alignment model of Business Intelligence and incentive systems with the aim to increase the information quality. We propose two hypotheses: An aligned incentive system leads to higher quality of information. However, information quality that is not subject to incentives will decrease after the introduction of such an incentive scheme....

Das erste Jahrhundert im dritten Jahrtausend ist nach einhelliger Ansicht von IT-Experten – dabei muss nicht einmal das Marktforschungsinstitut Gartner bemüht werden – gekennzeichnet von 1. zunehmenden, internen und vor allem externen Datenvolumina, die zum einen durch verbesserte Mess- und Sensortechnik anfallen, und zum anderen als unstrukturiert...

User generated content has become a valuable part of the Social Web, and high quality web content is used to influence buying decisions in a growing number of business domains. Numerous information quality frameworks have been proposed in the last years. Since 1989 at least twenty frameworks were written concerning information quality in different...

Based on a research approach with cultural probes, we analysed the work environments of a German design school. We identified five different types of spaces on the university’s campus and within the classrooms—the “solitary space”, the “team space”, the “tinker space”, the “presentation space”, as well as “transition spaces”. Each of these space ty...

This article presents a case study of an experimental product design project in the context of design education. Short stories by Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick were used as the source of inspiration for designing imaginary products within that narrative. Since the project was free of typical constraints, such as feasibility, cost-efficiency...

This article analyses the role of the space for facilitating creativity, especially in the context of creative education. Based on a qualitative user research with cultural probes, five different types of creative spaces were identified: 1) the “Solitary Space”, which allows thinking and meditation, and which is characterized by a silent atmosphere...

This paper presents suggestions how to frame design educational exercises with the aim to transfer specific types of design knowledge to students, or to generate new design knowledge within students, respectively. For this purpose, the paper refers to a typology of design knowledge that differentiates between four types of design knowledge—Artefact...

Role-playing is a means of concept representation that is often used in design thinking or service design, but relatively unknown in general management or business innovation. Originated in theatre, this technique can be used to prototype complex socio-technical systems, in order to evoke certain experiences in users, designers, or developers, as w...

The 18th academic conference hosted by the Design Management Institute (DMI) of Boston, Mass., attracted a greater number of papers than any previous conference. The event was intended to highlight the importance of the contribution of design to organisational effectiveness and success, particularly in the ways that it can improve the new product d...

This article analyzes the design thinking process in terms of its capability to create design knowledge. For this purpose, we refer to a typology that suggests four different types of design knowledge as well as three interjacent transitions. According to this typology, design knowledge can be represented in physical artifacts, as tacit gut feeling...

In this article, we analyse the concept of design thinking with its process, the team structure, the work environment, the specific culture, and certain brainstorming rules and techniques. The goal of this work is to understand how the creative mechanisms of design thinking work and how they might be improved. For this purpose, we refer to the idea...

This article presents a formal model of the design thinking process based on Method Engineering. The foundation of our work is based on observations within an educational context—the 'School of Design Thinking' of the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam, Germany ("HPI D-School"). We analyzed the design thinking process, as it is practiced there, an...

This article analyzes the role of artifacts in Information Systems regarding their capability to store and transfer design knowledge and to support the researcher-practitioner collaboration. A definition for design artifacts and their characteristics is presented that distinguishes between prototypes and products. Based on three examples for artifa...

This article analyzes the role of artifacts in Information Systems regarding their capability to store and transfer design knowledge and to support the researcher-practitioner collaboration. A definition for design artifacts and their characteristics is presented that distinguishes between prototypes and products. Based on three examples for artifa...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competition among mobile app stores for smart mobile media devices. Therefore, the business models of seven mobile app stores are analyzed with a special focus on Apple and Google. We use e3-value modelling - a formal business modelling technique - for analyzing the critical elements of these mobile ecosy...

It is estimated that between $600 and $850 billion annually is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse in the US healthcare system,with $125 to $175 billion of this due to fraudulent activity (Kelley 2009). Medicaid, a state-run, federally-matchedgovernment program which accounts for roughly one-quarter of all healthcare expenses in the US, has been partic...

This paper presents a novel research tool to analyze the semantics of three-dimensional forms. We developed an online game that uses crowdsourcing techniques to gather data about the perceptions of form from different people all over the world. The aspired result of the tool is a collection of statistical data about the semantics of form. The data...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a new method for blog quality assessment. The method uses the temporal sequence of link creation events between blogs as an implicit source for the collective tacit knowledge of blog authors about blog quality. Design/methodology/approach – The blog data are processed by the novel method f...

This paper presents a tool to collect empirical data about the collaborative meaning of form. We developed an online crowdscouring game, in which two users rate randomly assigned three-dimensional shapes. The more similar the ratings are, the more points both players get. This crowdsourcing method allows identifying what certain shapes mean to peop...

This paper is a theoretical approach to structure design-specific knowledge into a framework, which can be used within the context of organizational and societal development. We conducted an extensive literature review about existing definitions of design knowledge, and knowledge in general. Based on this, we developed a typology, which consists of...

Although service-oriented architecture (SOA) is becoming increasingly popular in enterprise application architectures, little is known about how SOA could support and influence the use and implementation of business intelligence (BI). We applied the Delphi method in order to identify opportunities and limitations of SOA concepts and technologies wh...

Despite the increasing number of publications in e-Recruiting, there is still scant research on the specific requirements of online resume fields, in particular from the recruiters’ perspective. In this paper, the fields for resume forms are investigated by analyzing literature, interviewing recruiters and systematically categorizing and content-an...

This paper proposes a novel approach for integrating estimations from multiple agents. The approach is based on the fuzzy set theory. However, compared to existing fuzzy logical methods that use fuzzy if-then rules, this method is based on solving an over-determined fuzzy equation system. The result is either a global inconsistency message or the c...

The idea of the Semantic Web is becoming more and more reality. Recent developments in Semantic Desktop research bring semantically enriched data onto the knowledge workers desktop environment. A crucial application for today’s knowledge worker is task management, which goes beyond simple ToDo lists. In this paper we explain why task management app...

Die oft mangelnde Motivation der Beteiligten zum Wissensaustausch gilt als eines der größten Probleme bei der Einführung von Wissensmanagementlösungen. Die Dissertation stellt zum einen eine Theorie der Wissensteilung vor, zum anderen wird ein Modell für elektronische Wissensmärkte entwickelt. Die Theorie der Wissensteilung zeigt mögliche Ursachen...

We propose an economic theory of knowledge sharing. The theory is grounded on game theory and experimental economics. This gives us a framework for analyzing knowledge sharing in different environments. The theory provides testable propositions about knowledge sharing. We used actual transaction data from a global knowledge management system to emp...

It is a matter of fact that the input of numeric data into databases needs careful screening to avoid semantic incoherency with respect to the knowledge at hand. In nearly all real applications such knowledge exists as models, i.e. as balance equations, behavioral equations or simply as definitions. The representation of those objects is possible b...

While classic information retrieval methods return whole documents as a result of a query, many information demands would be better satisfied by fine-grain access inside the documents. One way to support this goal is to make the semantics of small document regions explicit, e.g. as XML labels, so that query engines can exploit them. To this purpose...

A major challenge in knowledge management involves motivating people to share their knowledge with others. In many modern knowledge-oriented companies, this challenge is addressed by incentive systems that are linked to the knowledge-sharing activities of employees. The design of appropriate incentive systems is becoming more difficult for companie...