This paper summarises the initial results from a study that translates a research instrument into a business application that supports the early stage of new productservice system development, with the objective of clarifying design specifications. The business approach, called system design characterisation (SDC), contains five different graphical representations. Following the method of procedural action research, the feasibility, usability and utility of the graphical representations used in SDC are tested. Drawing from literature of multiple disciplines - engineering, design and cognitive science – how SDC may bridge the gap of design techniques that use multiple representations to manage complex information is discussed in this paper. The result of this study intend to contribute to the on-going discussions in the research community of design research or design methodology, as well as that of research methodology in terms of the use of procedural action research for business application development.