From practice to design and back: Emergence of an information service view

A critical part of transforming research to practice is the recognition of the coordination between the research domain and the problem-solving domain. An action research perspective which supports this coordination is useful in the realization of a new information service view of technology. The information service view engenders a shift from the provision of defined and preset services or applications to an environment that enables users to actively select and integrate technology services in the ongoing creation and re-creation of unique information systems in the service of action. In this research, we argue that design practice in the construction and evaluation of the information services view is a necessary complement to the expansion of research to construct a coherent view of this emergent class of IS. We use an exploratory case analysis of practice to construct a unique information service view and suggest that this view of service-oriented information systems can benefit practice and research.