Explanation provision and use in an intelligent decision aid

Abstract

Intelligent decision aids have been widely adopted by organizations in an effort to capture, retain and disseminate the knowledge of individuals within the organization. To date, these efforts have met with mixed results. Two primary limitations have been the usability of systems (users either cannot or do not wish to use systems) and the inability to transfer knowledge from such systems to less expert decision makers. Explanation capabilities have been perceived as a potential means for improving the effectiveness of such systems in terms of both usability and knowledge transfer. In this study, four advancements are put forth. First, a working prototype system for highly complex decision making is used as the foundation for implementing a full-scale, embedded explanation facility. Second, the development of the explanation facility is carefully grounded in the extant prescriptive literature on explanation types and delivery processes-including feedforward and feedback. Third, a development strategy is formulated and demonstrated as a generalized process of explanation development and integration. Fourth, high-level professional decision makers use the system and provide evaluative feedback on the usability and value of the explanation facility. Overall, the results of the development efforts and subsequent evaluation are very positive and provide a solid foundation for future research and practice efforts related to explanation provision within the context of intelligent systems. EXPLANATION IN AN INTELLIGENT DECISION AID 7 2. PRIOR RESEARCH ON EXPLANATIONS FOR INTELLIGENT DECISION AIDS 1 Described as Use of KBS [knowledge-based system] explanations in Figure 1 of Gregor and Benbasat (1999) and Figure 6 of Dhaliwal and Benbasat (1996). These figures provide a summary of the factors that are discussed in this paper.

ITSM ProcessGuide – A Process Guidance System for IT Service Management

“…Building on an extensive literature review on guidance in IS research [11], we propose the concept of process guidance to support users' in increasing their process model understanding,process execution effectiveness as well as efficiency, and process compliance performance. Thereby, we identified three theory-grounded design principles for PGS identified within existing guidance literature in IS research [7][8][9]. The design principles have been qualitatively evaluated in a series of expert inter- views being employees of the case company [12].…”

“…Users are supported in their process execution by visualizing the process model and the provision of additional information as well as explanations about the process. Building on existing research addressing the concept of guidance in IS research (decisional guidance [7], explanations [8], and decision aids [9]), our research project aims to design a Process Guidance System (PGS) enabling its users to execute the processes properly and thereby increase their process execution effectiveness and efficiency, process model understanding, and thus their process compliance performance. Overall, our research is guided by the following research question:…”

Incommensurability in design science: which comes first—theory or artefact?

“…The program of research was inspired by an artefact-an expert system called INSOLVE (Arnold et al 2004a)-and research on the concept of decisional guidance (Silver 1988(Silver , 1990(Silver , 1991. The program of research entailed the development of a new artefact, (DG-In), 2 to test a behavioural theory about improving reliance on decision support systems through the provision of decisional guidance.…”

“…The existing INSOLVE artefact that partially inspired our work was an expert system that was specifically designed to provide explanations in a manner conformant with the Gregor and Benbasat (1999) taxonomy (see Arnold et al 2004a for details). Indeed, Arnold et al (2004a:6) specifically note that the design of the explanation facilities in INSOLVE are 'heavily grounded in the extant literature on optimal explanation facility design' and 'follow a theory synthesised by…Gregor and Benbasat (1999) to motivate our explanation types' (p. 9).…”

“…DG-In focuses on the initial impression that insolvency practitioners must form to decide at the outset whether to liquidate the distressed business or attempt to trade out of difficulty. It employs an underlying decision model and materials gathered in an extensive knowledge acquisition effort that led to the original INSOLVE system (Arnold et al 2004a(Arnold et al , 2004bCollier et al 1999;Leech et al 1999), but in all other respects is an independent and distinct artefact. The decision model in DG-In has been independently validated by expert insolvency practitioners and employed in empirical research with practitioners-a majority of whom indicated they would find the tool useful in their practice.…”