Tailorable technologies are a class of information systems designed with the intention that users modify and redesign the technology in the context of use. Tailorable technologies support user goals, intentions, metaphor, and use patterns in the selection and integration of technology functions in the creation of new and unique information systems. We propose a theory of tailorable technology design and identify principles necessary for the initial design. Following a Kantian style of inquiry, we identified four definitional characteristics of tailorable technology: a dual design perspective, user engagement, recognizable environments, and component architectures. From these characteristics, we propose nine design principles that will support the phenomenon of tailoring. Through a year-long case study, we refined and evidenced the principles, finding found that designers of tailorable technologies build environments in which users can both interact and engage with the technology, supporting the proposed design principles. The findings highlight a distinction between a reflective environment, where users recognize and imagine uses for the technology, and an active environment in which users tailor the technology in accordance with the imagined uses. This research contributes to the clarification of the role of theory in design science, expands the concept of "possibilities for action" to IS design, and proposes a design theory of a class of information systems for testing and refinement.

Abstract. Action research (AR) has for many years been promoted and practised

As user interactions have become more central to specific classes of information systems, design theorizing must expand to support the processes of interaction and the evolution of information systems. This theorizing goes beyond user-aided, participatory design to consider users as designers in their own right during the ongoing creation and recreation of information systems. Recent theorizing about an emerging class of tailorable systems proposes that such systems undergo an initial, primary design process where features are built in prior to general release. Following implementation, people engage in a secondary design process where functions and content emerge during interaction, modification, and embodiment of the system in use. This case study reveals that people are engaged designers, framed by dualities in behaviors including planned and emergent behaviors, and participatory and reifying behaviors. We contribute to design science research by extending work on tailorable systems, investigating processes of secondary design in a highly interactive system suited to support user engagement. We also contribute more broadly to design science research by explicitly extending behavioral aspects associated with the use of information system artifacts.

Although our general knowledge about open source communities is extensive, we are only beginning to understand the increasingly common practices by which corporations design software through engagement with these communities. In response, we combine design theorizing with field-study research (1) to analyze rich qualitative data from over 40 corporations participating in the Linux open source community and (2) to synthesize the observed corporate-open source community engagements into a new type of information systems design theory that we call responsive design. Empirically, we document how corporate participants in these contexts respond to market decisions, interdependent ideologies, and distributed relationships by continuously establishing and maintaining connections with community members; connections that stem from the social and material rules inherent in the open source community. Based on these observations, we create the theory of responsive design as a particular form of corporate software design which, beyond the inclusion of external participants, distinguishes itself from traditional monocentric design in which one corporation controls a dedicated team of software designers focused on solving an isolated and singular organizational problem. Guided by the principles of interconnection, opportunism, and domestication, we define responsive design as the kind of design approach that enables corporate participants to create and maintain productive design practices in response to the complex and dynamic landscapes of activities that are the foundation of corporate-communal engagements. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this new form of corporate software design.

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