Improving usability in decision support systems: Practical use of the decision enquiry approach for requirements analysis

The function of Decision Support Systems (DSS) is to help their users to make more effective decisions by providing information in a way that actively assists the decision process. However despite widespread development and investment very few agricultural DSS in the UK have been taken up by end users. This paper describes the use of a method for requirements analysis based on Arinze's (1992) Decision Enquiry approach and on the use of workshops, in three agriculturally based DSS developments. It concludes that the method provides a cost-effective and practical means of gathering information about the task of decision making, organising it and using it as the basis for design decisions and could usefully be applied in other sectors beyond agriculture. The approach is being widely used in UK agricultural DSS production and the next stage in the development of the methodology is the specification of design and evaluation procedures.