Sharing Design Knowledge Through Codification in Interdisciplinary DSR Collaborations

The goals of design science research (DSR) projects are to generate novel and useful artifacts and to produce rigorous and generalizable design knowledge. Often, DSR projects are conducted in collaborative, interdisciplinary project teams. Different disciplinary approaches to codifying design knowledge result in challenging project interactions. To study this situation, we analyze design knowledge codification in interdisciplinary teams over time. We gain insights from a survey of recent DSR papers that have been published in the AIS Senior Scholars’ Basket. We then present a detailed case study of a longitudinal project that brought to light issues of sharing design knowledge across disciplinary borders. Drawing from the survey and case study, we provide actionable guidance on how to effectively codify and share design knowledge to support researchers and practitioners to build useful artifacts and to make interdisciplinary design knowledge contributions reusable and applicable.