Side effects of decision guidance in decision support systems

Ideal Decision Support Systems (DSS) provide aid in the attainment of a sol ution to a particular problem of the user. However, during system interacti on, the dialogue design of the DSS has the potential tea influence the outc ome of the solution. This side effect may or may not be desirable, but syst em designers must be aware of the potential impact. a laboratory study desc ribed in this report examines the significance of the impact. a total of 46 subjects conducted decisions on forecasting methods under two different de sign structures for DSS interfaces. An increase in guidance provided by the system led to a significant change in the decision model selected. This ch ange in model selected resulted in a number of different solutions to the s tudy's forecasting problem. In application settings, such impacts need to b e evaluated prior to implementation to avoid the situations where the softw are influences the decision process. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rig hts reserved.