Impact and Potential of Decision Research on Decision Aiding

Abstract

A workshop was held on May 4-5, 1987 to explore the past impact and future potential of decision research on decision aid design, and to recommend a research agenda that would contribute to decision aid effectiveness. Major conclusions were: 1. Research on human judgment and decision making has produced rich findings and theories about cognitive abilities and fallibilities, but designers of decision aids often fail to take advantage of this knowledge. 2. Decision aid research and development has been dominated by the push of currently popular technologies rather than by systematic study of user needs, resulting in widespread lack of confidence and frequent rejection of sophisticated aids by potential users. 3. New research is needed on agenda setting, option generation is unstructured situations, pattern recognition indecision making, effective use of graphic displays, achieving user trust, and avoiding restricting decision aid applications to narrowly focused problems without requiring large knowledge bases. 4 . Managerial efforts are needed to achieve better cooperation among researchers, decision aid developers, and potential users. Keywords: Decision research, Decision aids, Human judgment, Decision making, Cognitive abilities, Behavioral research, Cognitive tasks, Decision performance, Decision aided technology.

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