Going Back to Basics in Design: From the IT Artifact to the IS Artifact

Playing a central role in the information-systems research community’s discourse on design science has been the concept of the “IT artifact.” We pose the alternative concept of the “IS artifact.” We “unpack” what has been called the “IT artifact” into a separate “information artifact” and “technology artifact” that, together with a “social artifact,” interact to form the “IS artifact.” We illustrate the value of the “IS artifact” concept with material from two cases. The result is to restore the idea that design science needs to attend to the design of the entire IS artifact, not just the IT artifact.