
What I’m saying about design science is nothing new. I refer you
to Herbert Simon, whom many of us know for originating the well known concept
of “satisficing,” for authoring the book Administrative Behavior, and for
winning the Nobel prize for economics in 1978. Simon explained design
science in his book The Sciences of the Artificial, first published
in 1969. The idea of design science also appears in an article by
Sal March – a professor at the University of Minnesota and former Editor
in Chief of Computing Surveys. He co-authored the article with and
Gerald Smith. The article is, “Design and Natural Science Research
on Information Technology” in the journal Decision Support Systems.
Like the systems approach, design science is an old lesson just waiting
for us to apply it.