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Dear All,
The Communications of the Association for Information Systems has
opened a new department for papers dealing with digital design.
The department will be led by the associate editors Andreas
Drechsler, Dirk Hovorka, and Tuure Tuunanen. The department will
focus on extending design science research and acknowledging
design studies in digital contexts. More specifically, design and
designing can be broadly characterised by activities that lead to
new states or configurations of the world. Design and designing
are a concern in multiple academic and practical domains and have
been a core focus of information systems (IS) research since the
formative years of the IS discipline. In more recent times, IS
research has been concerned with design and designing in two
overlapping but distinct approaches.
The first approach, design science research, is one of scientific
problem solving (Simon, 1996) and embraces engineering and
sociotechnical perspectives with technical and operational
solutions as a foundation of IS scholarship (Bostrom & Heinen,
1977). The focus is on the synthesis of novel solutions through
iteratively mobilizing and integrating scientific knowledge into
“shaping artefacts and events to create a more desirable future”
(Boland, 2004, p. 106). Procedurally, it emphasizes scientific
methods, engineering, and construction of sociotechnical artefacts
as a way of knowledge construction, dissemination and transfer
(Hevner, March, Park, & Ram, 2004; Peffers, Tuunanen,
Rothenberger, & Chatterjee, 2007; Winter, 2008).
A second approach, design studies, focuses on designing activities
as open and forward‐looking pathways toward as‐yet‐unknown
creations (Cross, 2001; Germonprez, Hovorka, & Collopy, 2007;
Hirschheim & Newman, 1991). This approach shifts the focus to
the social processes and anticipatory foresight (Ingold, 2013) in
which designers improvise a passage between imagination and
recalcitrant materials in alignment with “what technology can do
for people, the places it will go and the needs it will address”
(Dourish & Bell, 2011, p. 4). Although artefacts may be
produced, this approach focuses on social and organizational
configurations, practices, and on developing correspondence
between actions, values, andmaterial things.
The discourse surrounding these distinct approaches is one
illustration that the IS field has a complicated relationship with
design. For instance, we have witnessed debates during the
inception and evolution of design science research regarding
knowledge creation, theorization, and the centrality of the
artefact (Gregor & Hevner, 2013; Nunamaker Jr, Chen, &
Purdin, 1991; Peffers et al., 2007; Pries‐Heje & Baskerville,
2008; Venable, 2006). Past and present editorial commentaries
about how design might form contributions welcomed by IS journals
(Baskerville, Lyytinen, Sambamurthy, & Straub, 2010; Österle
et al., 2010; Peffers, Tuunanen, & Niehaves, 2018; Rai, 2017)
demonstrate that this long‐lasting discussion has not lost
valence, intensity, or relevance to our community.
In response, the Communications of the Association for Information
Systems has established the Department on Digital Design as a
venue for IS researchers focusing on “design and designing” to
share their work with the IS community. We envisage this
department to be a forum for exchange, a distribution channel for
novel ideas about design, for new approaches, new findings, new
artefacts, and new discussions. In line with the overall mission
of the Communications of the Association for Information Systems
(
https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/about.html)
<https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/about.html)> we envisage this
department to be a standing outlet for academic discourse on
digital design that is open, inclusive and with a broad purview.
Submissions welcome!
More information is available at
https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/digital_design.pdf
<https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/digital_design.pdf> and
https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/whatsnew.html
<https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/whatsnew.html>.
Best regards,
Andreas, Dirk and Tuure
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