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Introducing technology at work presents a special challenge as learning is tightly integrated with workplace practices. Current design-based research (DBR) methods are focused on formal learning context and often questioned for a lack of yielding traceable research insights. This paper aims to propose a method that extends DBR by understanding tools as sociocultural artefacts, co-designing affordances and systematically studying their adoption in practice.

The iterative practice-centred method allows the co-design of cognitive tools in DBR, makes assumptions and design decisions traceable and builds convergent evidence by consistently analysing how affordances are appropriated. This is demonstrated in the context of health-care professionals’ informal learning, and how they make sense of their experiences. The authors report an 18-month DBR case study of using various prototypes and testing the designs with practitioners through various data collection means.

By considering the cognitive level in the analysis of appropriation, the authors came to an understanding of how professionals cope with pressure in the health-care domain (domain insight); a prototype with concrete design decisions (design insight); and an understanding of how memory and sensemaking processes interact when cognitive tools are used to elaborate representations of informal learning needs (theory insight).

The method is validated in one long-term and in-depth case study. While this was necessary to gain an understanding of stakeholder concerns, build trust and apply methods over several iterations, it also potentially limits this.

Besides generating traceable research insights, the proposed DBR method allows to design technology-enhanced learning support for working domains and practices. The method is applicable in other domains and in formal learning.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way to support work‐integrated learning for knowledge work, which poses a great challenge for current research and practice.

The authors first suggest a workplace learning context model, which has been derived by analyzing knowledge work and the knowledge sources used by knowledge workers. The authors then focus on the part of the context that specifies competencies by applying the competence performance approach, a formal framework developed in cognitive psychology. From the formal framework, a methodology is then derived of how to model competence and performance in the workplace. The methodology is tested in a case study for the learning domain of requirements engineering.

The Workplace Learning Context Model specifies an integrative view on knowledge workers' work environment by connecting learning, work and knowledge spaces. The competence performance approach suggests that human competencies be formalized with a strong connection to workplace performance (i.e. the tasks performed by the knowledge worker). As a result, competency diagnosis and competency gap analysis can be embedded into the normal working tasks and learning interventions can be offered accordingly. The results of the case study indicate that experts were generally in moderate to high agreement when assigning competencies to tasks.

The model needs to be evaluated with regard to the learning outcomes in order to test whether the learning interventions offered benefit the user. Also, the validity and efficiency of competency diagnosis need to be compared to other standard practices in competency management.

Use of competence performance structures within organizational settings has the potential to more closely relate the diagnosis of competency needs to actual work tasks, and to embed it into work processes.

The paper connects the latest research in cognitive psychology and in the behavioural sciences with a formal approach that makes it appropriate for integration into technology‐enhanced learning environments.

The purpose of this contribution is to motivate a new, rapid approach to modeling knowledge work in organizational settings and to introduce a software tool that demonstrates the viability of the envisioned concept.

Based on existing modeling structures, the KnowFlow toolset that aids knowledge analysts in rapidly conducting interviews and in conducting multi‐perspective analysis of organizational knowledge work is introduced.

This article demonstrates how rapid knowledge work visualization can be conducted largely without human modelers by developing an interview structure that allows for self‐service interviews. Two application scenarios illustrate the pressing need for and the potentials of rapid knowledge work visualizations in organizational settings.

The efforts necessary for traditional modeling approaches in the area of knowledge management are often prohibitive. This contribution argues that future research needs to take economical constraints of organizational settings into account in order to be able to realize the full potential of knowledge work management.

This work picks up a problem identified in practice and proposes the novel concept of rapid knowledge work visualization for making knowledge work modeling in organizations more feasible.

This work develops a vision of rapid knowledge work visualization and introduces a tool‐supported approach that addresses some of the identified challenges.