I A Framework for Design Science.- 1 What is Design Science?.- 2 Research Goals and Research Questions.- II The Design Cycle.- 3 The Design Cycle.- 4 Stakeholder and Goal Analysis.- 5 Implementation Evaluation and Problem Investigation.- 6 Requirements Specification.- 7 Treatment Validation.- III Theoretical Frameworks.- 8 Conceptual Frameworks.- 9 Scientific Theories.- IV The Empirical Cycle.- 10 The Empirical Cycle.- 11 Research Design.- 12 Descriptive Inference Design.- 13 Statistical Inference Design.- 14 Abductive Inference Design.- 15 Analogic Inference Design.- V Some Research Methods.- 16 A Roadmap of Research Methods.- 17 Observational Case Studies.- 18 Single-case Mechanism Experiments.- 19 Technical Action Research.- 20 Statistical Difference-Making Experiments.- A Checklist for the Design Cycle.- B Checklist for the Empirical Cycle.
This book is dense, perhaps too dense. I frequently found myself re-reading the same paragraph multiple times in order to understand it. While the language is precise, its abundant use of abstract concepts leaves the mind often wandering off topic.
Table references are frequently wrong in the print version, but it is easy to locate the referred tables anyway.
I found many answers in this book on how to carry out sounder research. While I am working as a research scientist for about 10 years now, this text helped me understand where new knowledge steems from in applied research.
It presents research as the development of an artefact (a piece of software, a method, a language, etc.) to treat a problem in a context. From there it explains how to evaluate the artefact, argue for causality, and argue for generality.
I definitely recommend it to anyone doubting about the value of its research activities but also to anyone doing research in applied technologies.
The level of abstraction used to describe common phenomenon in this book is simply comedic, but more importantly unpleasant... I understand the writer's desire to formulate concepts as consice as possible, but there is a point of no return where nothing makes sense and sentences need to be re-read hundreds of times. There is no shortage of knowledge but this knowledge was unfortunately conveyed in such a way that i felt compelled to write my first book review (ever) and inform everyone attempting to read this book that this wordsmith is not joking around.
Not the easiest book to read. The concepts in this book can be quite vague and it took me about half the book to get a grasp on the bigger picture. Once I understood the different research cycles and how everything fits together, I do think design science is very important and useful. It's a bit of a pity it is written the way it is.
It is a very informative book; however, terms are used interchangeably to the degree that it is impossible to absorb them. To understand what he was saying, I created an ontology. He also has a YouTube channel that provides more information about the book. I highly recommend it.