FEDS: a Framework for Evaluation in Design Science Research

By John R. Venable, Jan Pries-Heje, Richard L. Baskerville. European Journal of Information Systems, 2016

1,013 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Evaluation of design artefacts and design theories is a key activity in Design Science Research (DSR), as it provides feedback for further development and (if done correctly) assures the rigour of the research. However, the extant DSR literature provides insufficient guidance on evaluation to enable Design Science Researchers to effectively design and incorporate evaluation activities into a DSR project that can achieve DSR goals and objectives. To address this research gap, this research paper develops, explicates, and provides evidence for the utility of a Framework for Evaluation in Design Science (FEDS) together with a process to guide design science researchers in developing a strategy for evaluating the artefacts they develop within a DSR project. A FEDS strategy considers why, when, how, and what to evaluate. FEDS includes a two-dimensional characterisation of DSR evaluation episodes (particular evaluations), with one dimension being the functional purpose of the evaluation (formative or summative) and the other dimension being the paradigm of the evaluation (artificial or naturalistic). The FEDS evaluation design process is comprised of four steps: (1) explicate the goals of the evaluation, (2) choose the evaluation strategy or strategies, (3) determine the properties to evaluate, and (4) design the individual evaluation episode(s). The paper illustrates the framework with two examples and provides evidence of its utility via a naturalistic, summative evaluation through its use on an actual DSR project.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Mechanical Engineering, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c9b50998d0577fa8b7e719de56f15c583302698

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Management of Technology and Innovation

1. Stefan Seidel
2. Alexander Maedche
3. Shirley Gregor
4. Stefan Morana
5. Leona Chandra Kruse
6. Ulrich Gnewuch

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Stefan Seidel
2. Alexander Maedche
3. Shirley Gregor
4. Stefan Morana
5. Leona Chandra Kruse
6. Ulrich Gnewuch

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Stefan Seidel
2. Leona Chandra Kruse
3. Alexander Maedche
4. Stefan Morana
5. Ulrich Gnewuch
6. Shirley Gregor
7. Christian Janiesch
8. Steven L. Alter

Citations in the corpus

• Research Perspectives: The Anatomy of a Design Principle (2020, methodology): “A strategic process for evaluating DSR studies involves explicating goals, selecting a strategy for evaluation, determining the properties to be evaluated, and designing individual evaluation episodes (Venable et al., 2016).”
• Strategy archetypes for digital transformation: Defining meta objectives using business process management (2020, background): “Expert interviews are a naturalistic method to validate theoretical artifacts in real environments and organizational contexts [27].”
• Towards Designing Cooperative and Social Conversational Agents for Customer Service (2017, methodology): “This will allow us to identify difficulties and improve our prototype before conducting a more costly evaluation in a summative and natural setting as part of the second design cycle (Venable et al. 2016).”