Abstract
The costs of supporting highly complex and low usability software systems are often hidden. Users will often find ways to compensate for low usability by leverage other systems (dumping data to Excel), spending more time in the application (extra clicks, help desk calls), or abandoning the application altogether. We suggest that increased implementation of design can help IT achieve its goals of lower TCO, increased IS portfolio value, and higher customer satisfaction. In order to move design toward a more strategic position, we need to persuade two key constituents to increase their support of and funding for design: leadership and application delivery teams.
This proposal will discuss the design principles, persuasive technology principles, design theories, and evaluation criteria that will inform the design, instantiation, and evaluation of OneIT. We will also discuss characteristics OneIT must have in order to present a holistic view of the IS portfolio, and persuade users to increase strategic use of design as a means for achieving organizational goals for IT. Finally, we present a high-level analysis regarding the support and resources that would be required to carry out the research project.
Introduction
The costs of supporting highly complex and low usability software systems are often hidden. Users find ways to compensate for low usability by leveraging other systems (dumping data to Excel), spending more time in the application (extra clicks, help desk calls), or abandoning the application altogether. While the IT organization used as a model in this paper is currently implementing processes and systems to track actual time spent on software systems, the other factors mentioned previously remain unmeasured. For example, there are currently no enterprise systems that gather software usage metrics, usability metrics, or code complexity metrics for the entire IS portfolio.
When funding requests for software systems are being compiled, application delivery teams struggle to deliver the quantitative information leadership needs to decide why their project is a better investment than the next project. Leadership in turn lacks the data to make proactive decisions, or to objectively determine which projects truly have the best potential for maximizing ROI. This creates an environment where it is typically the best salesman who wins and not necessarily the project with the highest return on investment (ROI) for the business. This situation leads to mixed results in terms of the value extracted from IT investments across the organization.
The user experience design (UxD) team resides in the service organization and provides on-demand design for business information systems supported by the application delivery teams. The UxD team primarily works on designs for specific projects. However, leadership support would also be needed to allow the UxD team to allocate a portion of their time to the following beneficial activities:
- Strategically analyze our existing application portfolio,
- Proactively grow their knowledge of the business and its needs,
- Stay abreast of technology developments in the market, and
- Periodically delivering proof-of-concept artifacts and position papers presenting strategic design ideas that could benefit the organization.
Design of business IS is not just an on-demand service, but rather a strategic collaboration with teams across IT to deliver maximum value for business users. In order to move design toward a more strategic position, we need to persuade two key constituents to increase their support of and funding for design: leadership and application delivery teams. The goal of this paper is not to make a case for moving UxD out of the service organization, but rather to increase demand for design as a way of achieving IT goals of lower TCO, increased IS portfolio value, and higher customer satisfaction.
Business IS as it is used here refers to the internal and B2B applications used by employees to deliver value relative to their goals. These goals are a combination of overarching business goals, goals set for employees by their managers, and goals employees set for themselves. The ultimate purpose of this collection of goals is to deliver something that adds value to the business in some way.
In this paper, we will present a proposal for how OneIT would be designed and evaluated as a decision support system that leverages persuasive technology to achieve the stated design goals. Much, but not all, of the data required for OneIT is already available in one form or another across a myriad of systems. However, no projects have been undertaken to consolidate these data sources into a meaningful format that presents a truly holistic view of what it takes to support the business IS portfolio over time.
While the proposal presented here would benefit many groups in IT, the focus of this paper will be on the use of persuasive technology to drive greater utilization of UxD for business IS. This proposal will discuss the design principles, persuasive technology principles, and design theories that would inform the instantiation of OneIT as the IT design artifact. We will also discuss characteristics OneIT must have in order to present a holistic view of the IS portfolio and persuade users to increase strategic use of design to achieve organizational goals.
Design Theory
While the building of design theory has proven challenging for IS researchers, some progress has been made in the field in terms of how to conduct design science research. We will review how OneIT design can be informed by the design science research methodology (DSRM) proposed by Peffers et al. (2008), and the design-science research guidelines proposed by Hevner et al. (2004).
Peffers et al. (2008) reviewed existing literature and published a paper related to the development of design science research methodology. The authors provide the following definition of design science research:
“‘Design science…creates and evaluates IT artifacts intended to solve identified organizational problems.’ It involves a rigorous process to design artifacts to solve observed problems, to make research contributions, to evaluate the designs, and to communicate the results to appropriate audiences. Such artifacts may include constructs, models, methods, and instantiations. They may also include social innovations or new properties of technical, social, or informational resources; in short, this definition includes any designed object with an embedded solution to an understood research problem.”
Hevner et al. (2004) propose that for “the design-science paradigm, knowledge and understanding of a problem domain and its solution are achieved in the building and application of the designed artifact.” To facilitate Hevner et al.’s proposal, they present seven guidelines aimed at “[informing] the community of IS researchers and practitioners of how to conduct, evaluate, and present design-science research:”
- Guideline 1: Design as an artifact
- Guideline 2: Problem relevance
- Guideline 3: Design evaluation
- Guideline 4: Research contributions
- Guideline 5: Research rigor
- Guideline 6: Design as a search process
- Guideline 7: Communication of research.
Discussion
This proposal has focused on the design principles, persuasive technology principles, and design theories that would inform the instantiation of OneIT as design artifact. We have presented a provisional analysis of the personas and goals and have shown how persuasive events could be customized to address the user mental model and desired persuasion intent. We have discussed characteristic OneIT must have in order to present a holistic view of the IS portfolio and persuade users to increase strategic use of design to achieve organizational goals for IT. An initial set of qualitative and quantitative metrics to be evaluated has also been presented.
The OneIT artifact and documentation of findings have the potential to deliver a second IT artifact which is a model for IS portfolio management in organizations where leaders are challenged to drive beneficial behaviors and demonstrate the value of IT, and where delivery teams are challenged to deliver measurable value and customer satisfaction.
As such, we are seeking leadership support and funding of a two-year research project. Year one will focus on analysis of the problem domain and implementation of OneIT. Year two will focus on implementing enhancements, conducting evaluations, and documenting the research findings. In order to carry out the research, a project team with the following skill sets will be required: design; project management; business analysis; software architecture; rich internet application development; usability, quality assurance, and performance testing; data management and infrastructure; and domain expertise for all relevant systems.
Article References
Chatterjee, S., & Price, A. “Healthy Living with Persuasive Technologies: Framework, Issues, and Challenges,” Journal of the American Medial Informatics Association (16:2), April 2009, pp. 171-178.
Freeman, P., & Hart, D. “A Science of Design for Software-Intensive Systems,” Communications of the ACM (47:8), August 2004, pp. 19-21.
Dennis, A. R., Fuller, R. M., & Valacich, J. S. “Persuasive Systems Design: Key Issues, Process Model, and System Features,” MIS Quarterly (32:3), September 2008, pp. 575-600.
Hevner, A. & Chatterjee, S. Design Research in Information Systems: Theory & Practice (advanced copy), Springer Publishing, Warner, MI, 2010.
Kapor, M. “A Software Design Manifesto,” Bringing Design to Software, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996.
Locke, E.A. & Latham, G.P. “Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation,” American Psychologist (57: 9), September 2002, pp. 705–717.
Oinas-Kukkonen, H., & Harjumaa, M. “Persuasive Systems Design: Key Issues, Process Model, and System Features,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems (24:28), March 2009, pp. 485-500.
Peffers, K., Ruunanen, T., Rothernberger, M. A., & Chatterjee, S. “A Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research,” Journal of Management Information Systems (24:3), Winter 2007-8, pp. 45-77.
Venkatesh, V., Morris, M. G., Davis, G. B., & Davis, F. D. “User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View Source,” MIS Quarterly, (27:3) September 2003, pp. 425-478.
Vessey, I. “Cognitive Fit: A Theory-Based Analysis of the Graphs Versus Decision Sciences,” Decision Sciences (22:2), Spring 1991, pp.219-240.
Winograd, T. Bringing Design to Software, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996.
