DECISIONAL GUIDANCE - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 87

detected in the group's progress. And, in addition to studying suggestive guidance versus no guid-
ance, Huguenard and Ballou (2001) studied a version of the system that offered cognitive feed-
back, informing users when they violated the optimal decision rule. So, three studies include
feedback within the domain of decisional guidance while a fourth explicitly contrasts feedback
with decisional guidance. These observations suggest that the timing of guidance is another area
where definitions and operationalization require clarification.
Summation
The one overall conclusion that can be fairly drawn from this set of studies is that guidance of var-
ious sorts can improve performance in various realms. Given the many definitional and opera-
tional issues raised by these studies, however, great care must be taken in interpreting and
comparing the findings of individual studies. We are best served at this time by gaining insights
about the specific features each study considered rather than trying to draw broad conclusions
about particular kinds of guidance. The set of studies also suggests that even with more standard-
ization of definitions and operationalization, generalizing from empirical studies of guidance will
likely be difficult. This very small set of studies showed great diversity. With so many relevant
dimensions and so many ways that guidance mechanisms can differ even within a single cell of
the typology, drawing generalizable conclusions will be a significant challenge for future research
to embrace. We must use what we have learned from these studies to refine the definition and
typology in a manner that will help us confront that challenge.
REVISING THE DEFINITION AND TYPOLOGY
The foregoing observations lead to the following as a revised and broadened definition of deci-
sional guidance (including inadvertent and deliberate guidance):
Decisional Guidance: The design features of an interactive computer-based system that
have, or are intended to have, the effect of enlightening, swaying, or directing its users as
those users exercise the discretion the system grants them to choose among and use its func-
tional capabilities.
Since this revision extends the concept beyond the domain of DSS, some researchers may find
value in reparticularizing the definition to their own domains. For instance, DSS researchers may
find value in identifying the choosing of functional capabilities as structuring the process and the
using of them as executing the process, as in the original definition.
In addition to making decisional guidance more broadly applicable, the revised definition
also makes explicit two points implicit in the original. First, the new definition clarifies the focus
of decisional guidance on “design features.” The original definition less sharply delineated
whether guidance refers to the features, the effects, or both. The revision makes clear that the term
decisional guidance refers to the features, and that the study of decisional guidance is the study
of a set of system features and their effects. This shift in formal definition is consistent with
the way the term has been applied in the literature, which typically discusses “the effects” or
the “effectiveness” of decisional guidance, implying that the guidance itself is a system feature.
Note that a given system may have many instances of decisional guidance—that is, many differ-
ent features that enlighten, sway, or direct its users as they choose among and use its functional
capabilities.