How should Decision Support Systems present apparently “Bad News”?
Sunday, January 23, 2005 was not a good day for me. I’m emotionally involved with DSS News and DSSResources.COM and my rudimentary DSS was giving me “bad news”. I felt better after receiving Murray’s email, but I continued my inquiry into what we as DSS designers could and should do when a system might present negative information, also known as “Bad News”. Information presentation is especially important in DSS because a decision-maker is intended as the user of the system and hence will act and react to the information. The more important the decisions that will be made using a DSS, the more attention that needs to be given to building the DSS and especially to the information displays. I’m a DSS generalist and not a specialist in the intricacies of information display, and even a quick foray into this narrow, specialized topic shows how much knowledge needs to be “pulled together” to build “mission critical” DSS and to understand factors impacting the outcomes of using DSS. My exper
