About the DSR grid
Every paper concept in this bundle carries a DSR grid section that describes the study along six standardized dimensions. The DSR grid was proposed by Jan vom Brocke and Alexander Maedche in "The DSR grid: six core dimensions for effectively planning and communicating design science research projects" (Electronic Markets, 2019). It is a compact framework for capturing a Design Science Research (DSR) project on a single page, so that projects can be planned, communicated and - as here - compared with one another.
A DSR project moves between a problem space and a solution space, drawing on prior knowledge and producing new design knowledge. The grid arranges six equally important, rearrangeable dimensions that together capture this movement:
- Problem description - the problem the project addresses, positioned in the problem space (domain, stakeholders, time and place, and the goodness criteria that say when the problem is considered solved).
- Input knowledge - the prior knowledge the project builds on. Following Gregor and Hevner, this spans descriptive/Omega-knowledge and prescriptive/lambda-knowledge, and can include kernel theories, existing design theories, and existing design entities used as justificatory knowledge.
- Research process - the essential activities carried out to make the contribution, typically build-and-evaluate activities together with grounding activities (e.g., literature reviews) and any theorizing activities.
- Key concepts - the most important concepts used to describe the research (problem and solution space, process, and input/output knowledge), defined clearly enough to support rigorous evaluation.
- Solution description - the solution's essential mechanism and how it is positioned in the solution space by its representation: a construct, a model, a method, an instantiation, or a design theory. In this bundle the representation is recorded in the
dsr_solution_spacefrontmatter field of each paper concept. - Output knowledge - the design knowledge produced by the project. Unlike the solution description, output knowledge relates the problem and solution spaces to each other; when a project yields design entities rather than a design theory, it is the results of evaluating those entities in context that constitute the output knowledge. In this bundle, the output knowledge of each paper is captured as its atomic design-knowledge concepts (principles, requirements, meta-requirements, objectives, goals and features).
Relationship to the other primer: the About design knowledge concept defines the types of design knowledge (design principle, requirement, meta-requirement, objective, goal, feature); the DSR grid described here is the project-level frame that says how each paper produced that knowledge - from which problem, on what input knowledge, through which process and solution.