Decisional Guidance for
Computer based Decision support
A Review by Cheickna Sylla
Spring ‘97
Overview
• Decisional guidance Defined and Key Distinctions
• Providing Decisional Support: When &Why
• How can Designers build guidance into a DSS
• The Effects and Effectiveness of Decisional Guidance
• Critique and Conclusion
Decisional guidance Defined
• How a decision support system enlightens or
sways its users as they structure and execute their
decision.How the decision making processes can
be influenced. Or how the system’s functional
capabilities can help decision making: time,
quality, etc
Key issues for Studying
Decisional Guidance
When and why to provide deliberate decisional guidance
• Opportunities for guiding
• The motives for guiding
• The means for guiding
How to build deliberate decisional guidance into DSS
• The targets of guidance
• The forms of guidance
• The modes of guidance
• Consequences: The effects of inadvertent decisional guidance
• The effects of deliberate decisional guidance
• The effectiveness of deliberate decisional guidance
What is Decisional Guidance?
Key distinctions
• Mechanical/Decisional
• Inadvertent/Deliberate
• Suggestive/Informative
• Structuring/Executing
Key distinctions in the definition
of decisional guidance
Mechanical versus Decisional guidance
• Mechanical guidance helps users with the mechanics of operating a
system’s features often a matter of knowing when to push which
buttons
• Decisional guidance helps users deal with the decision making
concepts involved in choosing among and interacting with a systems
information processing capabilities
Inadvertent v/s Informative Decisional guidance
• Inadvertent decisional guidance is an unintended consequence of the
systems design and is not planned by the systems designer
• Deliberate decisional guidance is intentionally built into a system by
its designer
Key distinctions in the definition
of decisional guidance
Suggestive Decisional guidance v/s Informative decisional guidance
• Suggestive guidance makes judgmental recommendations(what to do,
what input values) to the decision maker
• Informative guidance provides pertinent recommendations that
enlightens the decision makers judgment without suggesting how to
act.
Decisional guidance for structuring v/s for Executing the decision making
process.
• Guidance for structuring the decision making process affects how users
choose which operators to invoke and the order in which to invoke
them
• Guidance for Structuring the process s affects how decision makers
perform the evaluative and predictive judgments necessary when
executing the chosen operators
Providing Decisional Guidance
when and why:
• Opportunities:
Are there significant occasions for providing
guidance
• Motive:
Supporting Decision makers
• To build a more supportive DSS that helps users
exercise judgment as they interact with the system
and confront its complexities
• The greater the needs of decision makers, the
greater the motivation for providing guidance
Providing decisional guidance
when and why
Motive:
Influencing Decision Makers
The objective is not to point decision makers
towards specific decisions but to influence the
way they reach the decision
Means:
• Can decisional guidance be implemented
How can designers build
Guidance into a DSS?
Targets of Guidance:
Structuring the Decision making Process
• Support for meta-choice, strategy selection
• Selecting the problem and ordering the activities
• Help users make decisional questions on selecting
capabilities
Executing the Decision making process
• Entails the actual performing of various information
processing and problem solving activities
• Assist human judgment for predicting future
conditions(e.g.. Inflation rate, acceptable profit level)
…Build Guidance into a DSS
Forms of guidance- Suggestive Guidance:
• Makes judgmental recommendations to the decision maker(What to
do? What inputs to use?)
• Structuring –recmd . Operators & inputs(data and model)
• Executing-recmd parameters & input values
• 3G-MCDSS, Pre decision support systems, Mini- Expert…
Forms of guidance- Informative Guidance:
• Provides pertinent information that enlightens decision makers
judgment and use of the system
• Structuring –Detailed analysis of operators
• Execution-clear definitions of inputs and their use
• Help Screens, relevant user history, application model
…Build Guidance into a DSS
Modes of guidance – Predefined
• System designer prepares and embeds into system, a set of
recommendations or informational;a displays
• Predefined graph, help screens(context based)
• Modes of guidance –Dynamic
• Constructing adaptive mechanisms that learn as the system
is used-content not pre-defined
• Knowledge base constructed dynamically
• Self evolving dynamic sys. Defaults, Active
systems(symbiotic..history recorder.. Suggestive guidance)
Form of Guidance
Suggestive guidance
Structuring
the
Process
Executing
the process
•Recommended operator
•Set of recommended
operators
•Ordered list of
recommended operators
•Set of operators not
recommended
•Recommended values
•Set of recommended
values
•Ordered list of
recommended values
•Set of values not
recommended
Informative Guidance
•Description /analysis of
operators
•Comparison of operators
•Map of relationship between
operators
•Record of behaviors in
similarity context
•History of activity this session
•Definition of required input
values
•Descriptions of how inputs will
be used
•Tables graphs or analysis of
data
•Records behavior in similar
contexts
•History of activity this session
TARGET
OF
GUIDANCE
…Build Guidance into a DSS
Modes of guidance – Participative
• Facilitate users deriving their own recommendations or
defining themselves the information they need.
• Suggestive guidance for meta-choice-legitimating criteria
Modes of guidance – Comments
• Guidance must be context sensitive
• Guidance should be dynamic and participative
• Facilitate active user participation
The Effects and Effectiveness of
Decisional guidance
Inadvertent guidance effect
• According to behavioral decision theory decisional
guidance guide inadvertently
Deliberate Guidance effect
• When is decision guidance useful and bothersome?
• Does guidance affect the operators and tools they select?
• Does guidance make system easier to use?
• When and how does decisional guidance bias decision
maker? When are such decisions desirable and when not?
• When does guidance improve or degrade the decision
making?
The Effects and Effectiveness of
Decisional guidance
•
•
•
•
Effectiveness of decisional guidance
Determinants of Decisional guidance effectiveness
How effective is each form to achieve its objective
Does mode interact with form of guidance(informative or
suggestive)?
• Can decisional guidance de-bias decision makers cognitive
or motivational biases? What risk is involved in it?
• When does the cost of learning guidance exceed its
benefits?
Critique of the article
• Behavioral approach towards guidance
• Technological minimization of human instinct/intuition
• Peter Keen in his article ‘Let us focus on action not info’
(1997) notes that its information use and not information
supply that needs to be addressed. To paraphrase Keen ,
DSS builders need to start their analysis by identifying
decision makers and the decisions they need to make and
not start with choosing a technology and readily available
databases
Critique of the article
• The paper is research oriented and only provides a
framework for design without clear pragmatic approach.
• Clearly the effects and effectiveness of decisional guidance
is more subjective and raises more questions than answers.
• The paper provides a base to encourage discussion on this
and related important topics
• Author offered additional work on this topic