About design knowledge

This bundle is a library of design knowledge: prescriptive knowledge about how to build an artifact (an information system, architecture, or method) to solve a recurring class of problems. In Design Science Research (DSR), design knowledge is contrasted with descriptive knowledge (theories about how the world is): it tells a designer what to do, not merely what is true. It is meant to be reusable - abstracted away from any single implementation so that it can guide the design of a whole class of systems.

Each of the 34 source papers follows a DSR process that moves from a problem to a solution and produces one or more of the concept types below. This library captures each such item as its own atomic concept so it can be retrieved, compared, and reused across papers.

The five concept types

The types below are ordered as they typically flow in a DSR project, from problem space to solution space. Papers vary in which subset they use and in their exact terminology; this bundle preserves each paper's own vocabulary as the concept type.

• Meta-requirement (type: meta-requirement) - a requirement that applies to a whole class of artifacts rather than a single instance. It states, in problem-space terms, a generalized need that any system addressing the problem class must satisfy.

• Design requirement (type: design-requirement) - a generalized description of the needs and goals a class of systems should attain to address a class of problems. In practice several papers use "design requirement" and "meta-requirement" closely, with requirements often being the more specific, elicited needs derived from the problem analysis.

• () and () - solution objectives that the artifact must achieve. They are derived from the problem and its requirements and act as a bridge between what is needed (requirements) and how it is achieved (principles). Objective-centered DSR studies sometimes stop at this level.