Feedback as a source of control in decision support systems: an experiment with the feedback specificity

Well-designed feedback can improve decision-making, but to date, there has been no comprehensive study of feedback in decision support systems that could guide developers in its design. This work examines the opportunities and means to enhance the user's consistency in implementing a decision strategy (a plan for making the decision) by providing appropriate feedback. It concentrates on the specificity of feedback. Feedback is said to be specific if it provides details about the decision-making process that help correct the process; feedback is non-specific if it merely reports outcome without indicating what caused it. The paper builds on concepts from cognitive engineering, behavioural decision-making, and systems design to examine how computer-generated feedback enhances the user's decision consistency, and reports on a laboratory experiment. Specific feedback is found to be effective in enhancing decision consistency, but its impact its compromised by the presence of additional non-specific feedback.