1.0 - Introduction

Although many information systems (IS) design methods and techniques are available to IS professionals, none of them completely supports the design process. One of the problems is that there is a mismatch between IS design method; and the system to be built. Actually, in designing an IS, the methods or techniques employed should match the types and characteristics of the system to be built. Thus paper will explore the relationship between IS types/characteristics and systems design methods, and provide IS designers with a systems framework to develop methods or techniques that match the types and characteristics of IS.

Information Systems (IS) planning has gained considerable interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years because of the large investments that firms have made in IS and the increasingly strategic nature of the impact of information systems on organizational performance. Since IS planning is performed in an organizational context, characteristics of the organization may have a significant influence on the quality and effectiveness of the IS planning process. A research model is developed that links two major dimensions of IS planning—the quality of the planning process and planning effectiveness—with a set of eight organizational factors derived from contingency research in IS planning, strategic business planning, organizational studies, and technology innovation. The model is validated using data collected from a field survey of 249 senior IS executives. Canonical correlation analysis is used to test the research hypotheses and validate the model. The results of the study indicate that the two planning dimensions respectively reflecting the “means” and “ends” of IS planning are equally important. The results also indicate that planning resources, the intended strategic impact of IS on future business operations, the quality of facilitation mechanisms, the quality of implementation mechanisms, and the quality of strategic business planning are significantly associated with the quality and effectiveness of IS planning. The implications of the results to further research and to managerial practice are highlighted.

The paper describes experiments that investigated the use of auditory stimuli (speech and non-speech sound) to communicate data in two information systems. These experiments were performed under a multimedia stock control system and a multimedia e-mail tool. Experiments using the multimedia stock control information system investigated rhythms and timbre to communicate windows and their associated functions as well as the simultaneous rise of speech and sound to communicate a large amount of information to users. Experiments using the multimedia e-mail tool investigated the use of tunes and short pitch sequences with visual stimuli to communicate information in browsing e-mail data. The paper also integrates experimental results front both systems and discusses the incorporation of auditory stimuli in interactive audio-visual or multimedia information systems. Auditory stimuli helped to communicate, complement or reinforce information that users received via the visual channel. These auditory technologies could also benefit visually impaired users of such systems. Results also indicated that the simultaneous use of sound and speech can be useful in the design of interactive multimedia information systems. The inclusion of auditory stimuli (including speech) in the design of information systems has the potential to maximise the volume of information communicated to users.

Redefinition creative and inventive design support system: DX application design process

This paper advances the long term project of developing a situated information systems analysis and design methodology. Conventional approaches to information systems design are informed by the widely-held view that human purposeful action proceeds by deliberation on a mental model of the world of action. In contrast, situated information systems are informed by the view of situated action theory that routine action is largely non-deliberative and makes crucial use of structures in the action environment for attainment of goals. The expectation is that systems designed using this situated approach will be more effective in supporting routine activity than systems designed using the conventional approach. This paper reports on a case study conducted in the chemotherapy unit of a large hospital. The case study was conducted using the preexisting version of the situated systems methodology with the results of the case study informing further development of the methodology. The research provides further evidence of the ability of information systems informed by a situated model of action to effectively support complex but largely routine activity.

Business process (BP) designs and enterprise information system (IS) designs are often not well aligned. Missing alignment may result in performance problems at run-time, such as large process execution time or overloaded IS resources. The complex interrelations between BPs and ISs are not adequately understood and considered in development so far. Simulation is a promising approach to predict performance of both BP and IS designs. Based on prediction results, design alternatives can be compared and verified against requirements. Thus, BP and IS designs can be aligned to improve performance. In current simulation approaches, BP simulation and IS simulation are not adequately integrated. This results in limited prediction accuracy due to neglected interrelations between the BP and the IS in simulation. In this paper, we present the novel approach Integrated Business IT Impact Simulation (IntBIIS) to adequately reflect the mutual impact between BPs and ISs in simulation. Three types of mutual impact between BPs and ISs in terms of performance are specified. We discuss several solution alternatives to predict the impact of a BP on the performance of ISs and vice versa. It is argued that an integrated simulation of BPs and ISs is best suited to reflect their interrelations. We propose novel concepts for continuous modeling and integrated simulation. IntBIIS is implemented by extending the Palladio tool chain with BP simulation concepts. In a real-life case study with a BP and IS from practice, we validate the feasibility of IntBIIS and discuss the practicability of the corresponding tool support.

In this paper we argue that the normal work of practitioners engaged in the design and use of information systems involves socio-technical reflections on these systems that are essentially symmetrical to the reflections that we social scientists make in our ethnographic observations of those actors and their systems. This has important consequences for research methods because it shifts ethnographic fieldwork amongst such practitioners from a ‘study of’ a given community or project towards an entangled process of semi-collective reflection on these systems and practices. To articulate this reframing, we first explore the notion of “infrastructural inversion” to show how information infrastructure studies has always in theory understood actors and analysts to be both doing infrastructural analyses, and we extend this insight to our understanding of ethnographic fieldwork and methods. Next, we relate two of our recent fieldwork experiences amongst designers of information systems in the sciences to show practically how, through the course of research, we became entangled with our subjects through the sharing of notes and analytical insights, engaging in jointly authored papers and otherwise collectively making sense of the partially connected worlds in which we work. Finally, we move to a discussion of what we see are the entailments of this reframing of fieldwork, focusing on how all of this changes our understandings of collaboration and reflexivity in ethnography. Overall we suggest that our frame promotes an attunement to the field as a place of heterogenous engagements rather than simple observation, and asks the fieldworker to be both conceptually and ethically open to the possibilities and consequences of collaboration with those that they study.

Taking into account today's rapid progress and improvement of scientific activity, the concept of system engineering can be designated as a direction in cybernetics, the main task of which is to study the planning, design and behavior of complex multicomponent information systems. Among the tasks facing system engineering, it is possible to single out the tasks of improving the quality, speed and profitability of engineering work, which is carried out thanks to large teams with specialists from various fields of work, and the object of system engineering activity can currently be recognized as a «complex system». The introduction of the latest scientific achievements into the production process of enterprises and the implementation of unique products and services based on scientific and technical developments should always take place as quickly as possible in order for the production process to be continuously optimized and become more efficient. This task is not the easiest, but it must be solved by developing an innovative work style that will solve scientific and technical problems comprehensively and systematically.

This research examines the definitions and interpretations of mindfulness in information systems (IS) literature and in Buddhism. It extends a previous qualitative case study (Wang, 2015) and further examines the students’ learning outcome in mindfulness and their interpretations of mindfulness in information systems development and end user experience. Students in a Systems Analysis and Design undergraduate course were asked to design websites for a contemplative community of practice. More than half of the IS students can interpret mindfulness using both the concepts in the existing IS literature and in Buddhism, even without the explicit exposure to the literature. For those students who have not related to both, they applied the IS literature to interpret mindfulness in systems development and applied Buddhism to interpret mindfulness in end user experience. Overall, the majority of the IS students who were exposed to mindfulness have recognized its importance in IS design and in end user experience and learned to express themselves with the terminologies of mindfulness, awareness, and contemplation.

Thema dieser Arbeit ist die Analyse der Auswirkungen von mobiler Hard- und Software auf Informationssysteme, die Untersuchung vorhandener Ansatze zur Spezifikation mobiler Systeme in der Informatik allgemein und fur den formalen Entwurf von Informationssystemen mit mobilen Einheiten insbesondere. Mobile Einheit wird dabei als Oberbegriff fur mobile Hardware- und Softwarekomponenten verwendet, und ein mobiles System ist ein System, das solche mobilen Komponenten beinhaltet oder auf das durch diese zugegriffen wird. Wir beschreiben die verschiedenen Formen, in denen mobile Einheiten in der Informatik auftreten, und entwickeln eine entsprechende Taxonomie, bevor wir deren Auswirkungen auf Computer- und Informationssysteme ausfuhrlich diskutieren. Verschiedene Ansatze zur Spezifikation mobiler Systeme werden vorgestellt und eingeordnet, wobei das Augenmerk speziell auf formalen Methoden liegt. Es stellt sich heraus, dass es keiner dieser Ansatze ermoglicht, den Auf- und Abbau von Kommunikationsverbindungen zu beschreiben und zwischen den stets mobilen Einheiten und denjenigen zu unterscheiden, die das feste Teilsystem als Kontext fur sie bilden. Beides sind aber wesentliche Aspekte, die in der Entwicklung von Informationssystemen mit mobilen Bestandteilen zu berucksichtigen sind. Daher stellen wir dann entsprechende Sprachkonstrukte als Erweiterung der Spezifikationssprache Troll inklusive der formalen Grundlagen vor. Diese Grundlagen beruhen auf erweiterten Datensignaturen und einer modularen verteilten temporalen Logik Mdtl, die beide uber Ereignisstrukturen interpretiert werden. Schlieslich wird die Verwendbarkeit der Sprachkonstrukte in der Entwicklung eines Systems zur Nutzung von Web-Diensten von Mobiltelefonen aus illustriert.

At the very core of Marketing Information Systems (MkIS) design is the identification of the marketing information needs of decision‐makers. Information needs can be defined as the user specifications of information characteristics involved in information seeking, and refer to those qualities of information perceived by managers to be “useful” to facilitate their decision making. Drawing on empirical results from three sets of literature and from studies of information systems design (particularly management and accounting information systems design), the authors review a framework for exploring the design of an MkIS. A qualitative study examining the information needs of senior marketing executives is also reported and discussed. The results, based on interviews with 20 senior marketing executives, indicate that marketing information needs can be defined using six information characteristics.

This thesis presents a new modelling method for information systems analysis and design, where the concept of service and the principles of service orientation are used for integrated modelling and reasoning about information systems architectures across organisational and technical systems boundaries. The concept of service enables cohesion of the intersubjective and objective modelling traditions by using a single type of diagram that facilitates detection of semantic inconsistency, incompleteness, ambiguity and discontinuity between the static and dynamic aspects of information systems specifications. The thesis is focused on three research topics, which are fundamental to the development of a new service-oriented modelling method. The first research topic concerns a pragmatic-driven specification of information systems. It clarifies answers to the research question: How can a conceptual modelling process be driven by pragmatic considerations? The second research topic provides a service-oriented modelling foundation for information systems analysis and design. It answers the research questions: How can the concept of service be used explicitly for the analysis and design of information systems and how can the static and dynamic aspects of information systems specifications be integrated at the conceptual level? The third research topic presents transition principles to implementation-specific design and answers the research question: How can service-oriented conceptual representations be aligned with implementation-specific design? The thesis contributes with a new knowledge to the area of conceptual modelling of information systems. The service-oriented modelling method consists of the modelling process, modelling language and techniques for the analysis and design of information systems on three levels of abstraction: pragmatic, semantic and syntactic. These three levels are necessary for a holistic understanding of enterprise architecture by stakeholders. The advantage of the service-oriented modelling method is that it can help to control traceability from information system design to original requirements. The method facilitates the semantic integration of the structural, behavioural and interactive aspects of information systems conceptual representations by using a single diagram type. The modelling language provides service-oriented constructs that are fundamental to building the major systems analysis patterns. The service-oriented modelling process contributes with seven steps of incremental design, which justifies various information systems components. The method provides the basis for a gradual and systematic way of modelling and an understanding of how pragmatic, semantic and logical information system requirements are linked together. The possibility to detect and eliminate undesirable characteristics of service-oriented diagrams can help to improve communication among stakeholders. Service-oriented specifications are computation-neutral and therefore they are more comprehensible for business analysis experts in comparison to implementation specific graphical representations of information systems. Finally, this thesis presents the challenges for future research, one of which is the development of the automated tools for the alignment of business models with implementation-specific information systems specifications.

The development of information and technology, making information a very important thing to support work in institutions and organizations, many organizations use web-based information systems to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their administrative and management performance, for example administration in church organizations. However, the application of web-based administrative information systems in religious environments, especially churches, is still very limited. Many churches, in reporting every week, use desktop applications in recording the number of offerings and congregations that attend divine services every week. Then for reporting every other activity there is no report at all. One of them is GBI Pertama Medan which in managing its administrative system which still relies on manual methods, namely through word processing applications such as Excel and Word which are still less effective, which results in various problems and obstacles such as recording errors, delays in submitting information, and difficulties in accessing data quickly and accurately. This study aims to and build a web-based administrative information system that will help make it easier for congregations and admins to search and manage administrative data for the First Indonesian Baptist Church Medan. The method used in the development and design of the First GBI Medan administrative information system is the Agile method. Which, this Agile method is widely used in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Each stage of this method, such as planning, analysis, design, development, testing, and maintenance can help design administrative web systems and various other administrative features at the First Indonesian Baptist Church of Medan, such as managing congregational data, offerings, ministerial schedules, announcements, and FT devotional reading lists. Based on the description above, the authors are interested in conducting research and taking the title of designing an administrative information system at the First GBI Medan web-based using the Agile method

Information systems for management planning and control are not new. Their development was closely aligned with the rise of complex business organizations in the nineteenth century (Chandler). These modern corporations had and continue to have great need for the systematic assembly and analysis of information for management planning and control purposes. Strategic management information systems (SMIS) generally differ from functionally oriented, tactical systems. Perhaps the most direct way to illustrate the difference is to begin with a definition of business strategy.

This study examines how accountants' participation in accounting information system (AIS) design can improve their perceptions of the quality of the information provided by the system. An empirical survey of 333 chartered accountants in Ghana was used and the research model was tested using covariance‐based structural equation modeling. The results indicate that accountants' participation in AIS design is positively associated with perceived accounting information quality. Additionally, autonomous motivation was found to mediate the relationship between accountants' participation and perceived information quality. In contrast, accountants' perceived usefulness of accounting information does not mediate the relationship between participation in AIS design and perceived accounting information quality. This suggests that accounting information quality is enhanced when accountants participate in AIS design hence play a critical role in information system design. However, accounting information quality is not enhanced through perceived usefulness of accounting information.