Codifying Interdisciplinary Design Knowledge Through Patterns - The Case of Smart Personal Assistants

摘要

Smart personal assistants (SPAs) are proliferating into our daily lives and are a ubiquitous platform for providing digital services. However, when designing such innovative IT artifacts, interdisciplinary domain knowledge is often needed. For example, SPAs utilize a plethora of sensors and cloud-based computation of data to deliver high-quality services, but those services, for example, may conflict with current regulations of law, e.g., with the Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. In that sense, approaches are needed to overcome the limited domain knowledge of developers. Thus, we propose in our study a pattern-based approach to codify interdisciplinary design knowledge. For this purpose, we derive theory-motivated requirements, develop design principles for patterns, and evaluate the utility of the patterns. Our results from a 2 × 2 fully randomized field study show that the provision of patterns for SPA development supports interdisciplinary design through better consideration of both service quality and law compatibility. Thus, we provide design contributions concerning how we effectively codify and communicate design knowledge and provide practical guidance for supporting interdisciplinary IS development.