Why is Man-Computer Interaction Important for Decision Support Systems?

This paper attempts to shed some light on the whole issue of man-computer interaction. The basic point of this paper is that we should not allow our traditional jargon to shape our current thoughts about the on-line tools we use now and the interactive tools we may use in the future.

Ever since it became feasible to provide computing environments which could support on-line terminals, management scientists have enjoyed extolling the virtues of their latest interactive decision support systems. In this climate of opinion, I set out to write a Ph.D. thesis [Alter, Steven. 1975. A study of computer aided decision making in organizations. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, MIT.] on the development and use of such systems in current business organizations. Early on, it became clear that something was drastically wrong. The ill-defined, but somehow anticipated “synergy” of man and machine just didn't seem to pan out in a sufficiently dramatic way to justify all the attention and anticipation. Although a substantial number of systems did deliver computing power in an online environment, the impact of man-computer interaction on the end result was almost always extremely difficult for users to define.