Applying Action Design Research (ADR) to Develop Concept Generation and Selection Methods

During conceptual design, concept generation and selection methods can be used to facilitate the generation of new ideas and the selection of the most promising suggestions. The present paper is an effort to understand better how action design research can be utilized to develop such methods. Using action design research, methods were developed through iterative cycles of building, testing and evaluation in the context of a deregulated railway market, through a close collaboration between actors from industry, a government agency and academia. The approach was found to be feasible and to provide generalization of the context-specific findings through the formulation of design principles.