Magnus Rotvit Perlt Hansen’s research while affiliated with Roskilde University and other places

Promoting the evolution of design knowledge is one of the most challenging tasks in design science research (DSR). Designers must build upon the available body of knowledge, reuse it within another setting, and reflect on the lessons learned during the use to advance the state of the art. As recent research points to limited reuse of both design knowledge and design artifacts, we believe that the process of codifying, enhancing, and building on previous research can be enriched by nuanced viewpoints and supportive practices. Against this backdrop, we transfer well-established theories for creating value through reuse from the field of circularity into a coherent framework for ‘circular design principles’. Our framework complements the existing guidance on reuse by (1) introducing lifecycle thinking of design knowledge, (2) theorizing about the process of reusing in DSR, as well as (3) diversifying the concept of reuse. In line with the accumulation tradition of research, we seek to aid scholars in operationalizing and complementing existing knowledge as well as positioning their papers as a form of reuse research.

Theory is a pivotal component in Information Systems (IS) research and no less so in Design Science Research (DSR) projects, which are typically expected to select and use kernel theories to develop theoretical contributions. However, the actual application and utilization of kernel theories remain challenging and heterogeneous – from producing theoretical outcomes in each project to using theory for the justification of design activities. This is problematic since academic journals have high expectations for selecting, using, and contributing to (kernel) theory. As a consequence, DSR researchers, especially novice ones, face challenges in navigating the high expectations of journals with a blurry research component. In this paper, we explore a set of tensions prevalent in the selection, use, and development of kernel theory to then elaborate on possible pathways to respond to them.

Initially designed to protect intellectual property (IP) of digitalized information goods such as music, games, or books, existing centralized digital rights management (DRM) systems mostly serve the interests of major publishers, with scant inclusion of rights owners, creators, and consumers. Although various blockchain-based DRM systems have been proposed, most of them mirror existing counterproductive IP restrictions. Analyzing the music industry as a case in point, this paper proposes design principles for blockchain-based DRM systems that provide an integrated and flexible solution by enabling transparent music licensing structures, consistent and complete rights metadata, and efficient and transparent royalty payout. The solution can be achieved by storing rights metadata on a public distributed ledger, by validating metadata through a consensus mechanism on a permissioned blockchain, and by algorithmically enforcing royalty payout via stablecoin through a smart contract. The design principles were evaluated by industry experts, validating their benefit for the music industry by increasing surplus value that is currently destroyed through previous suboptimal designs.

One of Design Science Research's (DSR) principal purposes is to generate and codify design knowledge. Codification in DSR is done by providing clear chunks of prescriptive knowledge that guide the design of future solutions, including instructions on how to design (parts of) artifacts. Although various codification mechanisms have emerged over the last years, design principles are among the most prominent mechanisms. Yet, distinguishing between different codification mechanisms is often blurry, hindering designers from making informed decisions regarding appropriate mechanisms for their research aim and leveraging the full potential of the prescriptive knowledge. We seek to bridge the challenge of selecting from the fuzzy array of codification mechanisms by proposing an inductively generated solution space. We provide a taxonomy to organize essential elements of prescriptive knowledge based on an analysis of design-oriented literature in four meta-dimensions (i.e., communication, application, development, and justification). These meta-dimensions make transparent how codified prescriptive design knowledge works. Overall, the taxonomy guides designers in reflecting on and selecting from the set of suitable elements for their statements. Also, providing a synthesis of options for codifying prescriptive design knowledge will simplify the identification and advance the positioning of DSR contributions.

Theory is an essential part of design research and helps us to explain what we see or guide what we design. In the paper, we shed light on how kernel theories are used in developing design principles in Design Science Research (DSR). We do this by reporting on a systematic literature review, from which we have extracted a set of six mechanisms to operationalize kernel theory. Each mechanism consists of an activity (e.g., "transform to" or "derive from") and an application point (e.g., meta-requirements or design principles) representing wherein the chain of concepts the kernel theory was used. The paper reflects on what we have learned about the use of kernel theories and translates this into recommendations and issues for further research. We provide researchers with guidance to use kernel theories more efficiently and give a big picture of the possibilities of kernel theory operationalization.

As the gravity of the impact of climate change on everyday life grows ever more relevant, green technology involving sustainability are also garnering more attention, and, in turn, more sophisticated IT solutions are needed. In this paper we review existing literature on the diffusion and transfer of technology in households in order to strengthen and prepare the future adoption of more IT-oriented sustainability solutions of green IT. We find that a large portion of household studies have taken place in the farming and agricultural sector of developing countries. We find that a large portion of the studies propose implications from a government policy perspective. We also find that a large portion of studies confirm factors influencing the diffusion and adoption coming from diffusion theory. Another significant portion takes a socio-cultural approach perspective. Finally, we find that collaboration, co-creation and participation seem to be effective in furthering the transfer and diffusion of sustainable and green technology in households. We discuss the implications of these different approaches when tackling the diffusion of green IT and propose taking a pluralist and design-oriented perspective since no single perspective or approach so far has resulted in large-scale technology transfer or diffusion to households.

Accumulating prescriptive design knowledge, such as design principles (DP), is one of the fundamental goals in design science research projects. As previous studies have examined the use of DPs in practice to advance the development and communication of such principles, we argue that this attention also needs to be paid to how and for what researchers (re-)use DPs. Hence, this paper explores DP usage in cumulative (information systems) research based on the analysis and coding of a sample of 114 articles with 226 in-text citations. In doing this, we aim at contributing to the valuable discourse on DP reuse and accumulation by focusing on usage in research, present preliminary types of DP usage extracted from cumulative literature, as well as raise the awareness for guiding user and designer in how to (re-)use and how to allow for reuse of DPs.

Many Design Science Research (DSR) papers in Information Systems (IS) suggest sets of design principles (DPs) that provide knowledge for creating instances, in different contexts, of IT artifacts that belong to the same class. However , despite frameworks for evaluating DSR contributions, the evaluation of DP reusability to, with and for practitioners has been largely neglected. We suggest that in order to maintain the practical relevance of DSR, papers with DPs as their key outcomes should contain a reusability evaluation of the proposed principles. We propose a framework of minimum reusability evaluation of DPs by members of the target community of practitioners. The framework comprises five criteria: (1) accessibility, (2) importance, (3) novelty and insightfulness, (4) actability and guidance, and (5) effectiveness.

Design principles (DPs) have been recognized as a central contribution in Design Science Research and the research community has begun acknowledging their importance. Much of this work implicitly assumes that design principles are natural components of contributions that can easily be derived by researchers without a need for criteria for their proposal, application or evaluation. In this paper we infer a framework for how to expose the conceptual structure of DPs as both components and sole contributions. We find a danger in assuming that design principles alone are contributions as they are very broadly used to propose utility yet the specific target audience or the explicit use of them as components of design theory occur less frequent. Furthermore, by applying our framework to a set of DPs, we offer four parts of their conceptual structure that can be used to convey the nature of design principle contributions and further identify potential areas for improvement or further research. We derive 8 questions that offer a guiding hand to researchers who attempt to embed DPs as components of their contribution either to research or to practice.