Using a Design Science Research Approach in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Project: Experiences, Lessons and Future Directions

Design science is a problem-solving approach that focuses on how to develop and produce artifacts having desired properties. A Design Science Research (DSR) approach was followed to develop a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) artifact (semiotic framework [Semiotic Interface sign Design and Evaluation – the SIDE framework]) to help practitioners to design and evaluate the web interfaces. The objective of this paper is to present how a DSR approach was adopted in a HCI project and to highlight what lessons were learned by adopting the DSR approach in developing a HCI artifact. This paper outlines how the principles and guidelines of DSR approach were adopted, while performing the activities of the DSR process model to construct the artifact. Lessons learned from this case study and their implications in HCI research are also discussed; that includes, for example, DSR provides higher level of procedural transparency, maintains the research rigor, create a bridge between the HCI and IS, provides established research knowledge base, support to claim both as an approach and a paradigm, and facilitates to employ both inductive and deductive design activities.