DECISIONAL GUIDANCE - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 100

Summation
Decades ago, forward-thinking practitioners and researchers recognized that the passive, batch-
oriented, one-size-fits-all management information systems (MIS) of the day did not meet the
needs of managers, who required more focused interactive tools that they could manipulate person-
ally to support their specific managerial tasks. These revolutionaries similarly rebelled against
overly rigid interactive systems that provided their users with little flexibility and discretion. Today,
flexible interactive systems that afford users significant discretion are the norm in many application
domains, not just in the realm of managerial support. But flexibility and discretion raise new ques-
tions: How will users behave given such flexibility? How will they exercise their discretion?
The study of decisional guidance promises an answer. Studying inadvertent decisional guidance
can help practitioners limit the unintended consequences of the features they design. Studying
deliberate decisional guidance—directive or not—can help practitioners develop and deploy
guidance mechanisms that enable users to cope more effectively with the flexibility and discretion
they are afforded. Such guidance, for instance, might help users deal with the featuritis of today's
word processors, electronic spreadsheets, and other productivity software. Such guidance might
help users cope with the overload of information and links they encounter on the World Wide
Web. Such guidance might help users avoid known pitfalls in their decision-making processes. It
might help increase consistency across users performing the same task in an organization. And
it might help groups avoid process losses in their interactions.
Providing deliberate decisional guidance successfully requires more than recognizing an
opportunity for guiding and inventing a corresponding guidance mechanism. Designers need to
consider the consequences of these mechanisms—including performance effects, user percep-
tions, and learning effects, which often conflict with one another. We have much to learn in these
areas. Our understanding of decisional guidance is still relatively primitive, but we are well posi-
tioned to advance our understanding and our practice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Gerry DeSanctis, whose guidance was always gra-
cious and invaluable. I appreciate the helpful comments of Lynne Markus, Sidne Ward, Mihir
Parikh, and two anonymous reviewers on earlier versions of the chapter. I also appreciate the sup-
port and advice of Ping Zhang and Dennis Galletta.
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