Visita a Groningen

Aprovechando la primavera holandesa, fui invitado a participar el pasado 9 de abril a un seminario de Innovación y Organización en la Universidad de Groningen para realizar una presentación titulada "Pragmatist-abductive design science research in information systems" cuyo resumen es el siguiente: Ever since H. Simon popularized design science (or the sciences of the artificial) as an alternative to natural science, it has been increasingly adopted by researchers in engineering, management science, design studies, and architecture, among others. Simon's framing nicely ties together design, problem-solving, decision-making and scientific research. However, not all researchers agree on how to go about it: what sort of underlying epistemology should we use; which type of reasoning best describes the discovery process; should there be theory development, and if so, what kind of theory should it create? Furthermore, many are still unconvinced that design and science are as close or similar as Simon argued. I will thus present design science research from a pragmatist and abductive perspective with the aim of clarifying the above questions as well as discussing the implications that this viewpoint has in terms of evaluation and validation of the research results. I will use much of the work that has been recently devoted to design science research in the field of information systems, presenting examples from this area and opening up new questions.