Soft design science methodology

TLDR

Soft Design Science offers a framework for improving human organizations by integrating design, development, instantiation, evaluation, and evolution of technological artifacts with a focus on social aspects. This paper proposes and evaluates a soft systems approach to design science research. The approach merges the design‑science research cycle with iterative soft systems methodology, repeatedly refining design, build, and evaluation until requirements are satisfied and adjusted to align with specific needs, and is assessed by comparing it to a published design‑science study. The resulting artifact functions as a general solution to a class of problems, as illustrated by its application to a specific instance and by demonstrating how the methodology could improve a prior design‑science study.

Abstract

This paper proposes and evaluates a soft systems approach to design science research. Soft Design Science provides an approach to the development of new ways to improve human organizations, especially with consideration for social aspects, through the activities of design, development, instantiation, evaluation and evolution of a technological artifact. The Soft Design Science approach merges the common design science research process (design, build-artifact, evaluation) together with the iterative soft systems methodology. The design-build artifact-evaluation process is iterated until the specific requirements are met. The generalized requirements are adjusted as the process continues to keep alignment with the specific requirements. In the end, the artifact represents a general solution to a class of problems shown to operate in one instance of that class of problems. The proposed methodology is evaluated by an analysis of how it differs from, and could have informed and improved, a published design science study, which used a design-oriented action research method.