© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 A Multi-Grounded Design Research Process

Abstract. There has been a growing interest in the philosophy and constituents of design research by a vast amount of IS-scholars. There are several unre-solved concerns and issues in design research (DR). Some examples are the outcomes of design research, the role of theorizing in DR, how to conduct eval-uation and validation, and the need for different grounding processes to gener-ate valid knowledge from design research endeavors. This paper describes a multi-grounded approach for design research; consisting of three types of grounding processes (theoretical, empirical and internal grounding). The pur-pose is to investigate DR-based design knowledge and its roles during design research and design practice. A key feature in this approach is the division be-tween the meta-design (within design research) producing abstract design knowledge and the empirical design practice producing situational knowledge and artefacts. The multi-grounding approach to design research will be illus-trated by the support of two design cases