Journal Publications

We develop principles to facilitate socially inclusive design-oriented research with marginalized groups. Prior work acknowledges this promise but points out the need to inform the research process with theoretical perspectives about social inclusion. Our effort begins with an empirical investigation of a multi-year research project to design several IT-based solutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We treat the efforts to design each solution as a ‘case,’ capture primary data from multiple sources, and analyze it in light of three facets of social inclusion drawn from prior work: self-determination, belongingness, and social capital. We interpret the findings to derive five principles for a socially inclusive research process: Principle of Problem Ownership and Solution Commitment, Principle of Individual Differences, Principle of Interdependence with the Support Network, Principle of Customized Research Conduct, and Principle of Authentic Collaboration. We elaborate each principle by showing connections to different facets of social inclusion, present guidelines suggested by our empirical investigation, and show how the principles can be used as part of contemporary design-oriented research approaches. The five principles suggest key directions for the research team to facilitate a socially inclusive research process when working with marginalized groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for IS scholars, and pointers for using design-oriented approaches for greater social inclusion of marginalized populations.

This paper investigates how information systems design professionals use design principles (extracted from a prior design science research project) in a new design situation. We do this by capturing think-aloud protocols from experienced design professionals who are given access to potentially useful design principles. Our analysis identifies two dimensions of use: design behaviors (what designers do) and application modes (how designers apply the principles). Mapping across the dimensions suggests two use pathways: forward chaining and backward chaining. Our study shows how empirically studying expert designers can shed light on the micro-processes of design principles in use, and how an empirical turn in the investigation can contribute to clarifying the fundamental nature of design principles. We conclude by highlighting the implications of these insights for crafting more useful design principles.

While ethics are recognized as an integral part of information systems (IS) research, many questions about the role of ethics in research practice remain unanswered. Our report responds to this emerging set of concerns with a broad and integrative account of five perspectives on ethics in IS research and design science research (DSR) in particular. Our report is informed by a broad literature review, a panel discussion at DESRIST 2020, and substantial personal experience from wrestling with ethical considerations in the field. The report provides a comprehensive discussion of prevailing perspectives on ethics and draws implications for IS research. Together, we hope the report will inspire more ethics-conscious and responsible IS research.

Objective: To identify determinants that contribute to the length of homeless shelter stay. Methods: We utilized a unique dataset from the Homeless Management Information Systems from Boston, Massachusetts, United States, which contains 44,197 shelter stays for 17,070 adults between Jan. 2014 and May 2018. Results: Our statistical analyses and regression model analyses show that factors that contribute to the length of a homeless shelter stay include being female, senior, disability, being Hispanic, or being Asian or Black African. A significant fraction of homeless shelter stays (76%) are experienced by individuals with at least one of three disabilities: physical disability, mental health issues, or substance use disorder. Recidivism also contributes to longer homeless shelter stays. Conclusion: The results suggest possible program and policy implications. Several factors that contribute to longer homeless shelter stay, such as gender, age, disability, race, and ethnicity, may have funding implications. Age may point to the need for early interventions. Disability is developmental and may benefit from treatment and intervention. Finally, we find that length of stay and recidivism are not independent, and may form a vicious cycle that requires additional investigation.

This study aimed to investigate the information needs of individuals who have or suspect they have contracted an STI. A better understanding of their information needs can drive the design of more effective digital interventions. We find three categories of information needs. The first two, clinical and logistical, are similar to other contexts. However, our analysis shows that there is a significant need for the last category—psychosocial information. Approximately 59% of instances are linked to concerns such as confusion, discretion, remorse, and others. These needs vary across the stages of a patient’s journey from symptom manifestation to treatment maintenance.

Contemporary smart home speakers (Amazon Echo™, Google Nest™) represent an opportunity to capture streams of big data that represent user interactions. Once captured, these data streams may be analyzed to understand use patterns for different demographics. In this research, we focus on one demographic, the aging-at-home elderly. We describe how such data streams may be captured with appropriate safeguards from smart home speakers deployed in the homes of elderly individuals. We analyze the data to develop visual representations and sonifications to discover several patterns about aggregate use, use intensity, use progression over time, and types of use. Based on these, we draw tentative conclusions about the aging-at-home elderly make use of smart speakers at home, identify some problems, and describe how the empirical findings may be used to discover new voice skills that can contribute to the quality of life for the elderly. The paper concludes with a discussion of possibilities for applying the approach we have demonstrated for larger data sets.

This paper examines breakdowns that occur when readers at partisan news websites attempt to understand a challenging news event. We conduct the work with the 2017 Alabama senate race as the empirical context marked by the nomination of Republican Roy Moore (a challenging news event for the left-leaning readers), and the story of his alleged sexual misconduct (a challenging news event for the right-leaning readers). To examine how readers attempt to understand these events, we scrape reader comments from two partisan news websites. Our analysis relies on and further elaborates the social representation theory and argumentation theory to identify obstacles that prevent the successful progression of social representation processes: rhetorical, epistemological, and emotional breakdowns. The findings from our data reveal indicators of rhetorical breakdowns (greater occurrence of fallacious and non-argumentative reader comments), and epistemological breakdowns (greater use of doxastic comments) both tied to how challenging the news event is as well as indicators of emotional breakdowns (greater occurrence of attack posture) tied to the emotionally charged nature of the news event. We interpret the findings as a balancing act between protecting pre-existing representations and acknowledging the challenging news event. The indicators of potential breakdowns we find enhance our understanding of partisan political discourse viewed through the lens of social representation processes. The paper discusses these contributions, including elaborations to social representation theory, and discusses implications of the work.

The era of big data provides many opportunities for conducting impactful research from both data-driven and theory-driven perspectives. However, data-driven and theory-driven research have progressed somewhat independently. In this paper, we develop a framework that articulates important differences between these two perspectives and propose a role for information systems research at their intersection. The framework presents a set of pathways that combine the data-driven and theory-driven perspectives. From these pathways, we derive a set of challenges, and show how they can be addressed by research in information systems. By doing so, we identify an important role that information systems research can play in advancing both data-driven and theory-driven research in the era of big data.

Systems integration—connecting software systems for cross-functional work—is a significant concern in many large organizations, which continue to maintain hundreds, if not thousands, of independently evolving software systems. Current approaches in this space remain ad hoc, and closely tied to technology platforms. Following a design science approach, and via multiple design-evaluate cycles, we develop Systems Integration Requirements Engineering Modeling Language (SIRE-ML) to address this problem. SIRE-ML builds on the foundation of coordination theory, and incorporates important semantic information about the systems integration domain. The article develops constructs in SIRE-ML, and a merge algorithm that allows both functional managers and integration professionals to contribute to building a systems integration solution. Integration models built with SIRE-ML provide benefits such as ensuring coverage and minimizing ambiguity, and can be used to drive implementation with different platforms such as middleware, services, and distributed objects. We evaluate SIRE-ML for ontological expressiveness and report findings about applicability check with an expert panel. The article discusses implications for future research such as tool building and empirical evaluation, as well as implications for practice.

The ideal of self-paced learning, which was introduced nearly 50 years ago by Keller in his Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), has not yet been widely adopted. In spite of its perceived promise of helping students to learn at the speed aligned to their individual backgrounds, motivation, and skills, PSI has been challenging to implement. University teaching practice with weekly plans means that instructors expect students to learn at the same pace. Against this backdrop, this paper reports experiences from deploying PSI in multiple offerings of an introductory programming course at a Scandinavian university over five years. These include variations, such as a buddy system, rightsizing modules, encouraging pacing, alternative targets, intermediate milestones, active coaching, and time management, all primarily aimed at overcoming a key concern associated with PSI, namely, procrastination. The lessons associated with each are described with a view to providing fellow instructors with strategies and options that they can consider for implementing PSI into introductory programming courses.

In the context of smart cities, the design of services requires something more than an understanding of functional requirements. It requires an appreciation of basic human values. Based on interviews with citizens in a large city, and an intensive text analysis – the authors describe how such values may be inferred. The authors find that this process of inferring values must account for both real and imagined experiences of citizens, and it can reveal both conflict and congruence among different values. Based on the authors’ investigation, they describe it as the VOICE approach, and discuss the implications of how such the use of such an approach can influence the design of citizen responsive e-planning services.

Action Design Research (ADR) is a research method for generating design knowledge through building and evaluating ensemble artifacts. In this paper, we respond to Goldkuhl’s critical review of the conceptualization of IT artifact in ADR. In particular, the review problematizes the so-called “conceptual journey” from an ensemble view to ensemble artifact, and suggests that this journey restricts the use of ADR. We recognize Goldkuhl’s critique as a valuable opportunity to clarify our thinking and elaborate the rationale behind the ensemble artifact. We maintain that the notion of ensemble artifact in ADR is appropriate because it highlights the forward-looking orientation of designing artifacts and stresses the importance of the context for the evolution and use of the resulting artifact. It stands in contrast to the retrospective orientation of the ensemble view nomenclature from Orlikowski and Iacono that we borrowed and extended for ADR. Finally, we endorse Goldkuhl’s proposed communicative view as a useful addition to the toolkit of ADR researchers who can study the design of communicative tool artifacts.

This essay investigates the ontology question in design science research. Writings on the philosophy of science do not fully address this concern for design science research because of the traditional emphasis on discovering truthful laws. In contrast, design science research dares to create novel IT artifacts with a view to realizing alternative futures. Taking this into account, the author articulates fundamental world-views for the canonical form of design science research, which involves instantiation of the outcomes as a software artifact. These world-views include an ontological basis and an epistemological stance that are the foundation of design science research practice. The author’s derivation of these world-views reflects shifts in the researcher’s stance through the research process, and the interconnectedness of the problem and the artifact. The author discusses implications of these proposed world-views including comparisons against other research traditions, greater clarity for design research practice, and the potential for extending the analysis to other strands of design science research.

We describe results from historical analysis of the IRS Business Systems Modernization (BSM) as an example of large-scale, public sector projects. The project has already spanned a decade and consumed more than 3 billion dollars. The paper suggests extracting stakeholder Sentiments and Confidence from documents, with a view to exploring how such measures may offer early indications of project progress and assist managers to prevent undesirable future outcomes. The key contribution of this research is a demonstration of a plausible technique to elicit stakeholder perspectives based on the content in publicly available documents, either complementing any existing methods, or supplanting them in projects where collecting primary data may be infeasible.

The processes followed for developing anticipatory standards such as those for web services are still not well-understood. In spite of the openness of the process, there are few analyses that shed light on the roles that different participants play or the actions they engage in during the development of these standards. We analyze archival documents that capture development of SOAP, a core web service standard. Our analysis shows that participants spend a bulk of their time discussing technical issues, identifying action items, and engaging in discussion to reach consensus. These activities reveal prototypical roles that participants take on such as: Advocate, Architect, Bystander, Critic, Facilitator, Guru, and Procrastinator. Together, the findings support the existence of three clusters in standards development processes: design activities performed by Architects, sense-making activities performed by Critics, and managerial activities performed by Facilitators; along with the important activity of coordinating the work of multiple participants. We discuss implications of our findings and identify opportunities for future work.

Design research (DR) positions information technology artifacts at the core of the Information Systems discipline. However, dominant DR thinking takes a technological view of the IT artifact, paying scant attention to its shaping by the organizational context. Consequently, existing DR methods focus on building the artifact and relegate evaluation to a subsequent and separate phase. They value technological rigor at the cost of organizational relevance, and fail to recognize that the artifact emerges from interaction with the organizational context even when its initial design is guided by the researchers’ intent. We propose action design research (ADR) as a new DR method to address this problem. ADR reflects the premise that IT artifacts are ensembles shaped by the organizational context during development and use. The method conceptualizes the research process as containing the inseparable and inherently interwoven activities of building the IT artifact, intervening in the organization, and evaluating it concurrently. The essay describes the stages of ADR and associated principles that encapsulate its underlying beliefs and values. We illustrate ADR through a case of competence management at Volvo IT.

Despite several outstanding issues, Web services technology is ideal for solving systems integration problems. Systems integration refers to the seamless interconnection of data and control flows among legacy and other applications to support transaction-intensive processes. This is a significant issue for organizations as they attempt to reduce cycle times, face increasing competition, and respond to demands for improved customer satisfaction.

Business processes are increasingly distributed and open, making them prone to failure. Monitoring is, therefore, an important concern not only for the processes themselves but also for the services that comprise these processes. We present a framework for multilevel monitoring of these service systems. It formalizes interaction protocols, policies, and commitments that account for standard and extended effects following the language-action perspective, and allows specification of goals and monitors at varied abstraction levels. We demonstrate how the framework can be implemented and evaluate it with multiple scenarios that include specifying and monitoring open-service policy commitments.

With the ceaseless development of new and more advanced technologies, along with their growing influence and control over business and commerce, it is no surprise that the educational community is struggling to come up with programs to educate students to adequately handle these developments. Textbooks are becoming a thing of the past, for information and standards are changing faster than any publisher is willing to re-publish. Instead, a student of advancing business technologies must be able to adapt and learn from the ‘here and now’ while efficiently filtering out any antiquated information. These students must also be able to handle the myriad technologies currently in use and solve complex problems. This paper investigates innovations in experiential learning and their application to enterprise systems integration education.

Evaluating collaborative systems remains a significant challenge. Most evaluation methods approach the problem from one of two extremes: focused evaluation of specific system features, or broad ethnographic investigations of system use in context. In this paper, we develop and demonstrate a middle ground for evaluation: explicit reflections on scenarios of system use coupled with analysis of the consequences of these use scenarios, represented as claims. Extending prior work in scenario-based design and claims analysis, we develop a framework for a multi-perspective, multi-level evaluation of collaborative systems called SWIMs: scenario walkthrough and inspection methods. This approach is centered on the capture, aggregation, and analysis of users’ reflections on system support for specific scenarios. We argue that this approach not only provides the contextual sensitivity and use centricity of ethnographic techniques, but also sufficient structure for method replication, which is common to more feature-based evaluation techniques. We demonstrate with an extensive field study how SWIMs can be used for summative assessment of system performance and organizational contributions, and formative assessment to guide system and feature re-design. Results from the field study provide preliminary indications of the method’s effectiveness and suggest directions for future research.

This approach specifies and monitors interactions among heterogeneous services by tracking their commitments. Such an approach can support service and process evolution.

The boundaries and contours of design sciences continue to undergo definition and refinement. In many ways, the sciences of design defy disciplinary characterization. They demand multiple epistemologies, theoretical orientations (e.g. construction, analysis or intervention) and value considerations. As our understanding of this emerging field of study grows, we become aware that the sciences of design require a systemic perspective that spans disciplinary boundaries. The Doctoral Consortium at the Design Science Research Conference in Information Sciences and Technology (DESRIST) was an important milepost in their evolution. It provided a forum where students and leading researchers in the design sciences challenged one another to tackle topics and concerns that are similar across different disciplines. This paper reports on the consortium outcomes and insights from mentors who took part in it. We develop a set of observations to guide the evolution of the sciences of design. It is our intent that the observations will be beneficial, not only for IS researchers, but also for colleagues in allied disciplines who are already contributing to shaping the sciences of design.

This study questions the traditional view of software architecture as a specification that needs only be understood by software architects and engineers. Based on an intensive study of three software-producing organizations, we identify multiple metaphors (‘Blueprint,’ ‘Literature,’ ‘Language’ and ‘Decision’) that stakeholders use to understand the term software architecture, which in turn, allows them to effectively participate in its creation and use. Our results point to new research directions that may better encompass a broader view of software architecture.

The design of large and complex enterprise integration solutions is a difficult task. It can require solutions that are unique because of constraints from the current set of legacy applications. Design knowledge for enterprise integration solutions is, therefore, difficult to articulate and reuse. In particular, the nature and form of knowledge for conceptual design of integration solutions is difficult to pin down. In this paper, we investigate whether design knowledge for enterprise integration in the form of patterns can be reused to develop systems integration solutions, and whether such reuse leads to more effective design outcomes. The research follows design science guidelines in which we describe a research artifact, and evaluate it to assess whether it meets the intended goals. The results indicate that approaches to facilitate reuse of conceptual design knowledge are feasible in the domain of enterprise integration, and that such reuse does, in fact, lead to more effective design solutions.

This article presents a study identifying benefits and challenges of a novel hospital-to-hospital information technology (IT) outsourcing partnership (HHP). The partnership is an innovative response to the problem that many smaller, rural hospitals face: to modernize their IT infrastructure in spite of a severe shortage of resources. The investigators studied three rural hospitals that outsourced their IT infrastructure, through an HHP, to a larger, more technologically advanced hospital in the region. The study design was based on purposive sampling and interviews of senior managers from the four hospitals. The results highlight the HHP’s benefits and challenges from both the rural hospitals’ and vendor hospital’s perspectives. The HHP was considered a success: a key outcome was that it has improved the rural hospitals’ IT infrastructure at an affordable cost. The investigators discuss key elements for creating a successful HHP and offer preliminary answers to the question of what it takes for an HHP to be successful.

Service-centric computing is one of the new IT paradigms that are transforming the way corporations organize their information resources. However, research and teaching activities in the IS community are lagging behind the recent advances in the corporate world. This paper investigates the impact of service-centric computing on business and education. We first examine the transformative impacts of service-centric computing on business and education in
the foreseeable future. Then, we discuss opportunities and challenges in new research directions and instructional innovations with respect to service-centric computing. We believe that this article will serve as a good starting point for our IS colleagues to explore this exciting and emerging area of research and teaching.

The design and construction of reusable artifacts is a labor-intensive and demands significant time and effort from expert designers. The up-front investment needed for constructing repositories of reusable artifacts is, therefore, often difficult to justify without immediate benefits. This research proposes a methodology, called the Domain Fragment Creator (DFC), to overcome this problem. It relies on a new type of reusable artifact, called domain fragments that can be generated by examining commonalities and variations in existing designs. The paper describes the methodology and evaluates the quality of the resulting repository using metrics such as domain coverage.

Improving information systems design outcomes requires not only innovations in tools and methodologies, which are design science efforts, but also willingness on the part of potential developers to incorporate these innovations into their design practice. This is particularly true for reuse-based design, because of developers’ reluctance to stray from their established modes of work. This research argues that the technology acceptance model (TAM) may be used to assess whether potential systems developers will adopt IT innovations that facilitate reuse-based conceptual design. We use the core technology-acceptance model to assess intent to use, based on the constructs of ‘ease of use’ and ‘usefulness’. One additional construct, compatibility, ensures that a key obstacle, minimizing changes to current design practice, is accounted for. We use a concrete instance of a previously proposed reuse-based design approach, APSARA, implemented in a prototype, as the basis for the study. The results indicate that significant contributors to the developers’ willingness to adopt reuse-based design approaches include compatibility with current practice and ease of use of the reuse-based design approach. We discuss implications of these findings for using tools such as APSARA, and for the use of TAM as an evaluation mechanism for design science research efforts.

A major impediment to accurate information retrieval from the World Wide Web is the inability of search engines to incorporate semantics in the search process. This research presents a methodology, CONQUER (CONtext-aware QUERy processing), that enhances the semantic content of Web queries using two complementary knowledge sources: lexicons and ontologies. The methodology constructs a semantic net using the original query as a seed, and refines the net with terms from the two knowledge sources. The enhanced query, represented by the refined semantic net, can be executed by search engines. This paper describes the methodology and its implementation in a prototype. An empirical evaluation shows that queries suggested by the prototype produce more relevant results than those obtained by the original queries. The research, thus, provides a successful demonstration of the use of existing knowledge sources to enhance the semantic content of Web queries. The paper concludes by identifying potential uses of such enhancements of search technology in organizational contexts.

Currently, standards for web services are being developed via three different initiatives (W3C, Semantic web services and ebXML). To the best of our knowledge, no theoretical perspectives underlie these standardization efforts. Without the benefit of a strong theoretical basis, the
results, within and across these initiatives, have remained piecemeal. We suggest ‘Language–Action Theories’ as a plausible perspective that can effectively define, assess and refine web services standards. In this paper, we first investigate the existing initiatives to identify commonalities that point to theories of ‘Language–Action’ as an appropriate theoretical basis for web services standards. Next, we adapt work from these theories to develop a comprehensive
reference framework for understanding web services standards. Finally, we use this reference framework to assess the three initiatives, and analyze the findings to provide insights for future development and refinement of web services standards.

In spite of considerable prior research, a generic framework has not emerged for structuring work on object-oriented (OO) metrics. We propose such a framework (Generic Framework) for object-oriented product metrics. The framework captures the generic structure of the underlying metrics space (Metrics Space) based on a mereological and set theoretic perspective of the building blocks of OO systems and relational measurement theory. We validate the framework by applying it to a repository of about 350 product metrics. The validation shows that the framework does, indeed, capture the underlying metrics space, and can be useful in identifying gaps and additional metrics that can extend the manner in which Metrics Space is currently populated.

Software maintenance is expensive and difficult because software is complex and maintenance requires the understanding of code written by someone else. A prerequisite to maintainability is program understanding, specifically, understanding the control flows between software components. This is especially problematic for emerging software technologies, such as the World Wide Web, because of the lack of formal development practices and because web applications comprise a mix of static and dynamic content. Adequate representations are therefore necessary to facilitate program understanding. This research proposes an approach called Readable (Readable, Executable, Augmentable Database-Linked Environment) that generates executable, tabular representations that can be used to both understand and manipulate software applications. A controlled laboratory experiment carried out to test the efficacy of the approach demonstrates that the representations significantly enhance program understanding. The results suggest that the approach and the corresponding environment may be useful to alleviate problems associated with the software maintainability of new web applications.

Relationships are an integral part of the design of a database. Comparing and integrating relationships from heterogeneous databases requires that the relationships be mapped to each other or to a common classification. Identifying similarities and resolving differences in relationships across large data sources is a resource-intensive task that could benefit greatly from semi-automated approaches. A prerequisite to developing such approaches is a clear understanding of the semantics of relationships used in database design. This research presents a layered ontology for classifying the semantics of relationships. It consists of a core layer that captures the fundamental types of relationships between entities. A middle layer provides the internal context, obtained from entities surrounding the relationship, to interpret the fundamental types. The outer layer allows further interpretation using the external context, that is, the domain in which a relationship is being used. An initial assessment on relationships from a variety of application domains demonstrates that the ontology can be adequate and useful for comparing relationships across databases.

This paper describes some of the problems that IS faculty encounter, when they attempt to teach emerging information technologies. We conceptualize these problems as a dilemma: between an objectivist perspective for teaching the basics of tools and syntax and a more enlightened, constructivist and socio-cultural pedagogical perspective that emphasizes principles and application of the technology. In this paper, we explore this dilemma drawing on a specific case study, where the authors were engaged in teaching eXtensible Markup Language (XML) at a Scandinavian institution. We follow a multi-method research approach drawing on our own critical reflections throughout the term, and feedback obtained from the students at the end of the term. The data indicates that for teaching emerging technologies, educators face challenges at several levels including class content, class conduct, and designing of educational experiences. The students appear willing to pay the cost of fragmented approaches for the benefit of getting an early start on learning emerging technologies. Integrating these with perspectives afforded by the learning theories leads us to strategies that may be useful for designing and conducting courses in emerging information technologies.

Conceptual design is an important, but difficult, phase of systems development. Analysis patterns can greatly benefit this phase because they capture abstractions of situations that occur frequently in conceptual modeling. Naïve approaches to automate conceptual design with reuse of analysis patterns have had limited success because they do not emulate the learning that occurs over time. This research develops learning mechanisms for improving analysis pattern reuse in conceptual design. The learning mechanisms employ supervised learning techniques to support the generic reuse tasks of retrieval, adaptation, and integration, and emulate expert behaviors of analogy making and designing by assembly. They are added to a naïve approach and the augmented methodology implemented as an intelligent assistant to a designer for generating an initial conceptual design that a developer may refine. To assess the potential of the methodology to benefit practice, empirical testing is carried out on multiple domains and tasks of different sizes. The results suggest that the methodology has the potential to benefit practice.

We survey metrics proposed for object-oriented systems, focusing on product metrics. The survey is intended for the purposes of understanding, classifying, and analyzing ongoing research in object-oriented metrics. The survey applies fundamental measurement theory to artifacts created by development activities. We develop a mathematical formalism that captures this perspective clearly, giving appropriate attention to the peculiarities of the object-oriented system developmenr process. Consistent representation of the available metrics, following this mathematical formalism, shows that current research in this area contains varying coverage of different products and their properties at different development stages. The consistent representation also facilitates several analyses including aggregation across metrics, usage across metrics, equivalent formulation of metrics by multiple researchers, and exploitation of traditional metrics for object-oriented metrics. We also trace the chronological development of research in this area, and uncover gaps that suggest opportunities for future research.

The importance of, and distinction between, problem and design spaces has been recognized in studies of information systems development (ISD). With increasing acceptance of object-oriented techniques, which promise close mirroring of real-world concepts in the IS artifacts, this distinction becomes even more important. In spite of a rich literature stream dealing with the general notion of ‘design,’ several inadequacies remain in our understanding of the ISD processes—one of these is the recognition and impact of problem and design spaces. In this paper, we analyze processes followed by two developers engaged in a non-trivial development task using the object-oriented modeling techniques—with a view to understanding their use of, and explorations in, problem and design spaces. Our analysis provides evidence for a distinction between the two spaces, and interprets the developers’ engagements and behaviors to structure the two spaces with the help of object-oriented modeling techniques. Several interesting findings emerge from our analysis, including the overlapping of spaces due to the use of object-orientation, disturbing patterns such as design fixation, interplay between simulation, expansion and validation in the design space, and the varying use of modeling techniques to structure the two spaces. Our analysis, supported by prior literature, provides a grounded description of some phenomena that have, hitherto, had only intuitive or prescriptive support. Based on these, we argue for more methodological and tool support for explorations of problem space, and enhancements to current approaches, for better integration of problem and design spaces.

Object-orientation and distributed systems are quickly becoming norms for new system development, generating renewed interest in distribution schemes traditionally directed at relational databases. Though a number of facilitating technologies, such as EJB, COM, or CORBA, are available, pragmatic, and rigorous approaches for effective distribution are still lacking. In this paper, we develop an approach for deriving object distribution models by exploiting design information. The approach exploits information realistically available during the design stage, without requiring guesstimates of operational parameters. It spans multiple layers, mappings across which may be adjusted depending upon changes in assumptions and operational conditions to create specific models. We demonstrate the approach by operationalizing it to create a model for object distribution in closely coupled client/server configurations. The detailed model we demonstrate, therefore, represents one specific instantiation of our approach. The model is accompanied by a decision support procedure that assists the designer in the search for a satisficing solution in the resulting combinatorial multiple criteria problem. We briefly describe a research prototype that served as proof-of-concept and demonstrate usefulness based on an analysis of results obtained for distribution of a real-world object-oriented application.

Conceptual business models and conceptual models of information systems represent widely different perspectives, which are difficult to integrate due to differences in structure and meaning that exist across these two viewpoints. Such problems in integration can be difficult for an information architect to predict. Yet, the interoperability between the two is essential to ensure efficacy of the information system that will be built. Our research provides an approach to integrate a specific business modeling vehicle, based on workflows, against a specific IS implementation vehicle, based on object-oriented programming. The approach takes into account semantic constraints to ensure that the two perspectives can be integrated, thus moving the integration beyond the level of structures. Using a deductive argument form, we apply semantic constraints to the core concepts of in workflow management, mapped onto those in object-oriented programming languages. The mapping builds on ontological models of both domains-treating the concepts in each as things in the world – and integrates both worlds into a single ontology enriched with semantic constraints. The key innovation of this work, therefore, lies in reasoning about the semantics of conceptual mappings by standard logical means. The results demonstrate a practical approach to map semantic constraints across domains with example derivations. The research, thus, extends existing work closer towards practical application in several contexts including projects involving embedded workflow. The approach has been successfully used in several large real-world projects to reduce design efforts by increasing the consistency, simplifying the overall structure, and making the enterprise architecture more concrete.

Systems development research shows that practitioners seldom follow methods and that the competencies required for successful development of computer-based systems go well beyond those represented in contemporary methods. These insights make us question the role that methods should play in educating would-be developers. Pedagogical theories, such as situated learning and double-loop learning, complement these insights. Integrating the two, we argue that students need to complement the simplified accounts that methods express, with reflections on methods-in-use and on development practice in general. We present operationalizations of this idea in two quite different academic settings. Based on a retrospective analysis of our experiences in these settings, and a comparison and evaluation of the two approaches, we propose a number of lessons that can be used to improve the education of would-be developers.

Object-oriented applications are increasingly being deployed in distributed computing environments. Technologies, such as Java RMI, and architectures, such as CORBA, DCOM, and Enterprise Java Beans, are facilitating and enhancing this trend. The performance and eventual success of these applications is dependent on distribution decisions made by the application designer. This decision is a complex one, involving a large number of alternatives and multiple conflicting criteria. Rigorous approaches for effective distribution of object-oriented applications are still lacking. This paper describes the implementation of a practical and effective approach for distributing object-oriented applications. A prototype decision support system—object distribution environment (ODE)—that implements the approach in the form of a user-friendly tool for the design of distributed object-oriented applications is described. ODE has been successfully used in the distribution of a real world distributed object-oriented system.

With the move to distributed systems and an increasing emphasis on the use of object-orientation for new system design, effective distribution of object-oriented applications is becoming an important concern for designers. Early research in this area has focused on object-clustering schemes for shared memory configurations that have limited value to business applications, which must be distributed over loosely coupled networks. These applications also exhibit the properties of simpler structural relationships and a large number of instances, demanding approaches closer to fragmentation and allocation instead of clustering. This paper develops an approach to distribution of object-oriented applications over geographically dispersed sites in loosely coupled networks—taking account of concerns such as encapsulation, inheritance, messaging, and implicit joins. The approach consists of two phases. First, we develop a scheme for generating class fragments, which ensures that encapsulation is not violated and inheritance is not stretched across sites. Second, considering the message-intensive operation of object-oriented systems, we devise models for allocation of class fragments to sites that minimize inter-site traffic. A non-arbitrary procedure to compile traffic volume estimates exploiting the notion of implicit joins in object-oriented applications provides the natural linkage between the two phases. A research prototype was implemented to establish feasibility of the proposals. We demonstrate usefulness of the approach by its application for distribution of a real-world information system.

An increasing number of computer applications today use multimedia content such as images, sound, and video over distributed networks of computers. Often, a dispersed set of users, with varying demands, requires ongoing access to this content. Effective placement of the multimedia content at different locations/processors thus becomes essential to ensure acceptable quality of service at a reasonable cost. Achieving this requires the consideration of a set of issues quite different from that required for traditional data distribution. These include (a) scale, both in terms of individual objects and in aggregate, (b) importance of form or appearance, making resolution levels an important, controllable variable, and (c) the temporal dimension, placing stringent demands on response time. These concerns make distribution of multimedia content more than a straightforward extension of traditional distribution approaches. We develop a model and a supporting approach to facilitate effective distribution of multimedia content, focusing on multimedia applications in corporate intranets. The model consists of multiple criteria to reflect different aspects of quality of service and cost which we formulate by leveraging variance in resolution levels to capture trade-offs among these criteria. Since the multiple-criteria allocation model is NP-complete, we propose a decision support approach that generates locally efficient solutions using designer-specified targets and evaluates them using fuzzy-set-based heuristics. The complete model and the approach have been implemented in a prototype to ensure feasibility.We demonstrate use of the prototype for a medical imaging application that illustrates applicability and usefulness of our proposals.

Several real-world problems, including distributed system design and product design among others, are characterized by combinatorially explosive solution spaces as well as multiple, conflicting criteria. Strategies for finding near-optimal solutions, developed for combinatorial problems, are not applicable in such situations, which require a balance between extensive computation and continual interaction. This makes support or automation of these decisions a difficult task. Current approaches to solve these problems fall in three categories: analytical, genetic algorithm-based approaches and local generators. They frequently assume well-behaved functions and clear understanding of interdependencies among criteria. Many such problems, however, present noisy and discontinuous evaluation functions and contain holistic interdependencies among these functions, rendering these solution approaches inadequate for these problems. We propose a theoretically grounded approach for decision support for this class of problems. The approach combines broad and deep searches with decision-maker feedback that allows the decision-maker to guide and/or stop the search. Specifically, it provides the decision-maker information about (a) the search spaces explored/probed so far, and (b) the search space not yet explored (or may never be explored). We operationalize the approach in a two-phase solution procedure. The first phase — broad characterization of search spaces — requires choices about randomization, sampling and decision space estimation techniques. The second phase — iterative local probes — requires choices about local search heuristics, and fuzzy interpretations based on which the decision-maker can evaluate alternatives and/or stop the search. We demonstrate a specific instantiation of the approach for a multi-criteria object assignment problem to verify the feasibility of our approach.

Active learning opportunities are an important element of course design. Most current lecture and course formats do not provide any overt means to encourage this activity-active learning. This paper proposes two complementary strategies that directly contribute to this objective. The first, hyper-link teaching, is an alternative mode of in-class lecture delivery. Executing this mode of teaching requires preparing class handouts as anchors for discussions and sharing control over class conduct with the students. The second, intelligent slides, resembles information bases that we enhance with electronic links, to facilitate exploration of concepts by students outside the classroom. Executing this approach requires leveraging existing slides to include electronic hyper-links across related materials and delivering the materials to students over the world-wide-web. This paper outlines the author’s progression from early use of hyper-link teaching through its current version, which integrates intelligent slides. Each technique is motivated, demonstrated, and primary indications are provided about its usefulness. Over a period of two years, these techniques have been successfully integrated in undergraduate and graduate IS courses. Lessons learned during this time are shared with the readers. Educators may benefit from initiating either technique, and then integrating the other if and when they need.

Although a number of libraries of patterns have been developed for reuse, there is no mechanism for supporting automated design of object-oriented systems by the intelligent reuse of patterns from such libraries. We describe a web-based system, APSARA, the purpose of which is to create object-oriented designs based upon simple requirements descriptions. The system, developed in Java, implements a pattern retrieval and synthesis methodology that uses natural language processing and automated reasoning heuristics. The system is tested on multiple cases from different domains. The results are reported using metrics defined in the spirit of familiar measures such as recall, precision, coverage and spuriousness. These initial tests suggest that this is a feasible approach for the reuse of patterns in object-oriented design. The testing also reveals specific areas of concern and suggests a number of avenues for extending this research.

By Hans J. Schneider (at ACM): The object-oriented paradigm adapts naturally to distributed processing. The authors present a pragmatic approach to distributing object-oriented applications over existing networks of computers. The method starts from a logical specification describing class hierarchy, object interactions, and application functionality; and a description of the network. It consists of two steps. On the intersite level, the aim is to minimize global communication, whereas optimization of several performance criteria is the primary focus on the intrasite level. First, attributes and methods of subclasses are rolled up to their farthest ancestor, creating packages containing all information relevant to every instance. Class fragments suitable as distributable units are identified by deriving appropriate predicates from scenarios. A dynamic programming model is used to allocate fragments to sites. On the intrasite level, these class fragments are broken into constituent classes, and the methods become the units of distribution. The authors distinguish among data-related models, user interface methods, and processing-related methods. The approach takes into consideration four conflicting criteria: assigning methods to the most appropriate processor type; taking advantage of concurrency; minimizing interprocessor message traffic; and considering costs of replicating object instances. The prototype tool implements an iterative and interactive procedure controlled by the designer. The concept is clearly presented, and conclusions from the discussions are summarized in brief tables. 

Proliferation of microcomputers and the advances in data communication technology have accelerated the trend towards the development of distributed computer systems. The design and development of applications in this environment present various opportunities and challenges. This paper examines the important phases of System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to identify the changes required for application development in a distributed environment. Additional steps required in obtaining user requirements have been identified. The commonly used tools in logical system design have been modified, and some available CASE products are examined to judge the ease of implementing these modifications. Finally, issues related to the physical design have been discussed.