DSS News is a free biweekly newsletter from DSSResources.COM
about Decision Support Systems.
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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
January 30, 2005 -- Vol. 6, No. 4
A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
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Purchase the DSS FAQ
83 frequently asked questions about computerized DSS
http://dssresources.com/dssbookstore/power2005.html
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Featured:
* Ask Dan! - How should Decision Support Systems present
apparently "Bad News"?
* DSS Conferences
* What's New?
* DSS News Releases
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Ask Dan!
How should Decision Support Systems present apparently "Bad News"?
by Dan Power
On Saturday, January 22, 2005, a special issue of DSS News was sent to all 1066
subscribers. The purpose of the special mailing was to showcase some rapidly
approaching deadlines for submitting papers to conferences especially AMCIS 2005.
I had been contemplating adding a conference announcement list to DSS News for
some time and the project kept being pushed aside. With some conference deadlines
approaching, I wanted to act to support the efforts of those who organize workshops,
meetings and conferences relevant to building and understanding decision support
systems. So I hurriedly created the special mailing.
Doing a task in a hurry is often a mistake and I apologize for the informal nature
of the mailing, but Saturday, January 22, 2005 was busy and hurried. I actually initiated
the mailing myself at Topica.COM, the web-based service that DSSResources.COM uses to
maintain the DSS News email list and support sending the bi-weekly newsletters.
For almost 4 years, until September 2004, DSS News was sent using Topica's free email
discussion lists. In the beginning, DSS News actually ran some Topica supplied ads.
The free service is limited to fewer than 1000 subscribers and DSS News outgrew the
service. That's good news for the DSS Community, but it meant that to grow our subscriber
base we needed a new email service. After some investigation, we moved to Topica's
permission-based email marketing solution. The annual cost of the service is about
USD $500. Readers can take a web-based tour of the interface and find out about the
main features of the hosted application at www.topica.com . Currently, DSSResources.COM
revenues pay the cost for maintaining and mailing DSS News.
I was in a hurry so rather than having the DSSResources.COM Webmaster, my oldest son Alex,
handle the mailing, I did it myself. Right! We were both still learning about how to use
the many features of the new system. I created a Campaign which is Topica lingo for a mailing
using the touted "point-and-click content entry system". I decided to try out Topica's
Tracking feature and rather than sending the mailing to a more target audience I sent it
to "All Subscribers". We have defined a number of audiences based upon email addresses
and profile information. I also "cleaned up" the list.
At Topica "As forms are submitted, campaigns sent, messages opened, links clicked
and transactions completed, valuable intelligence is being gathered, automatically
enriching your Topica database. Topica provides detailed reporting to help you
understand this information, so you can optimize your efforts. Daily list activity
reports track the overall size of your list ... Real-time delivery reports confirm
that campaigns were sent per your specifications and, more importantly, show you
how recipients responded to those campaigns by detailing opens, clicks and purchases
per link, per recipient, so you can see exactly who clicked what." So Topica has a
data-driven decision support subsystem. Topica is primarily providing a transaction processing
subsystem for subscriptions and an information dissemination subsystem. The
decision support subsystem is quite rudimentary.
So what does the DSS Conferences mailing have to do with "Bad News"?
On Sunday morning, January 23, 2005, I checked the DSS Conferences Campaign Detail
Performance Summary. We had 130 bounces. The spam filters are wrecking havoc on email
delivery, but the "real-time" delivery reports showed another troubling number. The
Subscriber Activity Reports showed that 41 subscribers were "deleted" on January 22,
2005. My initial reaction was "why did so many people unsubscribe?" Only 2 subscribers
were unsubscribed on January 16 with 36 accounts disabled (mailing for DSS News vol. 6, issue 2)
and 14 subscribers were deleted on January 2, 2005 (mailing for DSS News vol. 6, issue 1). I
was concerned that those 41 people "unsubscribed" because of the unexpected DSS Conferences
mailing. I was also blaming myself for hurrying with the mailing and doing it myself.
Bad news!
In the Data-Driven DSS tradition, I decided to drill-down into the details of who
unsubscribed and see if I could figure out what had happened. This was all happening
on a Sunday morning. I went into the subscriber database and viewed the list of deleted
subscribers. To my dismay, I noticed that my friend Murray Turoff at New Jersey Institute
of Technology had been deleted on January 22, 2005. I did some additional investigation
and finally decided to send Murray an email. I had 2 email addresses for him and copied
the message to both figuring that the subscribed account may have been disabled.
My email (1/23/2005 10:56AM) read: "Hi Murray-- I'm writing an Ask Dan! column titled How
should DSS present 'bad news'? One example that I'm planning to use relates to the
web-based data I received from Topica.com today as part of managing my mailing lists.
Yesterday, I sent out an email on DSS Conferences to promotes some Calls for Papers,
ISCRAM 2005, ISDSS 2005, etc. and when I checked my stats this morning 41 addresses had
been unsubscribed from the DSS News mailing list. Some had been removed because the address
was bouncing and others through voluntary removal. One of the addresses on the unsubscribe
list was yours...Any help or comments you can give me about the unsubscribe would be
appreciated. It was "bad news" to see your email address on the list."
Murray responded (1/23/2005 6:44PM) "Dan I never did anything that should have removed my
email address. ... I have no idea what happened. Once in a while the NJIT computer could
reject mail when the mail server goes down, but I don't recall that happening. They have a
spam system and it should not have rejected the DSS newsletter. I know I got one recently
or in December at least." Murray's response made me feel better, but I knew I still had a
problem.
After additional investigation, I determined that we were deleting subscribers after 4
hard bounces. So spam filters are causing problems for DSS News. Please let your friends
know that if they haven't received DSS News in awhile that they should make sure it is
"white listed" in their email spam filter.
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 experience demonstrated that 24-7 web-based operations can
cause additional problems when apparent negative information is received by decision makers
on evenings/weekends. Then the stress associated with decision making may be harder to
resolve. I experienced a common problem with drill-down -- atomic facts without a context
can be disconcerting. Also, the drill-down to who unsubscribed had inadequate detail. I
could see the date when a person was unsubscribed, but I couldn't tell if it was the result
of a rule, i.e., more than 4 hard bounces, manual unsubscribe by the administrator, or a
voluntary unsubscribe. Also, it became evident that presenting an absolute number like 41
doesn't show the meaning or significance of the value. The red down arrow in the display
was also disconcerting. In a DSS, it is important to create context and facilitate gathering
follow-up information.
In my search for suggestions about improving DSS information displays, I turned to my
library and Google. While surfing a few years ago, I had found Edward Tufte's
blog (www.edwardtufte.com/tufte) and an Ask E.T. question about Executive Decision
Support Systems. So I checked there. Tufte is a Professor Emeritus at Yale University,
where "he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design".
Tufte was asked to share guiding principals or "best practices" in the presentation of Key
Performance Indicators to the senior executives of a corporation.
Let me paraphrase and summarize Tufte's ideas (check his site):
1. "ask first of all: What are the thinking tasks that the displays are supposed to
help with?"
2. build systematic checks of data quality into the display and analysis system.
3. good management information systems are boring.
4. "use simple designs to show well-labeled information in tables and graphics; displays
should often be accompanied by annotation, details from the field, and other supplements."
5. "from a display, decision-makers need to learn what the story is and whether they can
believe the story."
6. "most of all, the right evidence needs to be located, measured, and displayed. And
different evidence might be needed next quarter or next year."
I also reviewed some user interface design articles and books and I want to recommend David
Tegarden's tutorial on "Business Information Visualization" that appeared in Communications of
the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) in 1999. Perhaps I can expand on what the experts
have concluded in another Ask Dan?
This experience reinforced the importance of being careful in interpreting data; when data is
presented in a negative way it is easy to focus on the worst interpretation of the data rather
than upon multiple interpretations. Also, good information display is important in building
DSS whether the information will be interpreted as negative or positive. A green up arrow can
cause as many, if not more, problems as a red down arrow. Many of us are actually complacent
and accepting of "Good News", even if the facts don't support that initial conclusion.
Decision makers need all of the information that is realistic to provide, intentionally or
unintentionally delaying, ignoring or distorting some data because it might be "bad" news is
always a mistake.
In retrospect, I am strongly reminded that who gets decision support information is important
and it is especially important to help decision makers interpret the information. In general,
it is impossible to completely remove the ambiguity and provide the complete decision context
in a DSS (but we should try!). This information constraint is why I advocate building DSS and
keeping decision makers in the loop rather than using decision automation in semi-structured,
ambiguous decision situations.
This experience also reminded me that sometimes apparent "Bad News" can turn into "Good News"
and vice versa. In this case, the "Bad News" resulted in this column. Please keep reading DSS
News and tell your friends. Let's continue to build a strong DSS community.
References
Teagarden, D., "Business Information Visualization", Communications of the Association for
Information Systems, Volume 1, Article 4, January, 1999 at URL
cais.isworld.org/articles/1-4/default.asp?View=html&x=68&y=10 .
Tufte, E. "Executive Decision Support Systems", Ask E.T., at URL
www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00002r&topic_id=1 .
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Have Questions? Post to the Web Forum at
DSSResources.COM -- Free registration
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DSS Conferences
Call for Papers
1. 2005 Crystal Ball User Conference will be held June 13-15, 2005 at the Marriott Denver
City Center, Denver, Colorado, paper submission deadline is January 31, 2005.
Check decisioneering.com/cbuc/2005/callforpapers.html
2. AMCIS 2005 will be held in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, August 11th - 14th, 2005. Deadline for
abstract submission is February 1, 2005.
Check amcis2005.isqa.unomaha.edu/callforpapers.htm
3. 2005 DSI International Meeting, Barcelona, Spain, July 3-6, 2005. Paper submission deadline
February 1, 2005.
Check www.iese.edu/en/events/Projects/dsi2005/Home/Home.asp
4. 16th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA 2005),
August 22 - August 26, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, abstracts due February 19, 2005.
Check www.dexa.org
5. 8th International DSS Conference of AIS SIG DSS, 12-15th July 2005, Porto Alegre, Brazil,
papers due February 27, 2005.
Check www.ufrgs.br/dss2005
6. First International Workshop on Business Process Intelligence (BPI 05) in Nancy, France,
September 5, 2005, papers due March 18, 2005.
Check is.tm.tue.nl/bpmws2005
7. International workshop on Context Modeling and Decision Support in Paris, July 5th, 2005,
submission deadline is March 25, 2005.
Check ec.cba.hawaii.edu/context
8. 2005 DSI Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA, November 19-22, 2005, paper deadline
April 1, 2005.
Check www.dsi2005.org
Upcoming Conferences
1. The 2005 Semantic Technology Conference will be held March 7-10, 2005, Stanford Court Hotel,
San Francisco, CA, Check www.semantic-conference.com
2. Second International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
(ISCRAM 2005), Brussels, April 18-20, 2005, Check www.iscram.org.
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Dan Power will be discussing DSS for Crisis Response and Management at
ISCRAM 2005.
3. DAMA+Metadata -- 9TH Annual Wilshire Meta-Data Conference and the 17TH Annual DAMA International
Symposium, May 22-26, 2005, Orlando, Florida USA
Check wilshireconferences.com/MD2005/index.htm
PLEASE NOTE: DSSResources.COM and DSS News are Media Sponsors of DAMA+Metadata
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Tell your DSS Friends about DSS NEWS and DSSResources.COM
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What's New at DSSResources.COM
01/24/2005 Created DSS Developer Tool Briefs, see the Tools link in the For Developers channel.
This resource will be expanded and currently includes Multicriteria Decision Analysis and
Multidimensional Analysis briefs.
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Have Questions? Post to the Web Forum at
DSSResources.COM -- Free registration
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DSS News - January 15 to January 28, 2005
Read them at DSSResources.COM and search the DSS News Archive
01/28/2005 SBS Interactive sets debut of revolutionary duo(TM) immersive video technology in film
presentation Jan. 31 at Noon Eastern.
01/28/2005 Department of Homeland Security to begin US-VISIT biometric exit pilot at Detroit
Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.
01/28/2005 Gartner announces Business Intelligence Summit 2005 for March 7-9, 2005.
01/27/2005 City of New Orleans launches high-tech video assault on crime.
01/27/2005 Texas County and District Retirement System chooses Quantrix financial modeling
software for pension plan decision support and planning.
01/27/2005 eCredit named as 2005 Codie Award finalist.
01/27/2005 Using predictive models to prescribe health information; Healthwise paper shows
health plans how to help more people make better health decisions.
01/26/2005 Study by Quality Planning Corporation reveals major discrepancy between reported
and actual mileage.
01/26/2005 Project management software company sees 100% increase in sales as it releases
Project Administrator v. 3.3 including change management and issue tracking.
01/26/2005 Applix establishes TM1 Center of Excellence to advance best practices for BPM
and BI applications.
01/26/2005 Midway through school year, Mayville State University's rollout of Gateway Tablet
PCs a pen-ultimate success.
01/26/2005 Cognos to host executive seminar series on plan-to-perform blueprints.
01/25/2005 ProficientSales Server 4.0 increases web site revenues by improving online visitor
targeting and engagement.
01/25/2005 MicroStrategy selected to integrate into two IBM Retail industry solutions.
01/25/2005 McDonald's Canada standardizes on Cognos ReportNet(TM) for enterprise-wide reporting.
01/24/2005 TeleTech and Avaya deliver new hosted services to help companies manage customer
interactions.
01/24/2005 Hyperion and De Lage Landen forge strategic partnership; Rabobank subsidiary to
showcase risk management solution and best practices for business performance management.
01/23/2005 Intergraph demonstrates Geospatial Intelligence Solutions at DGI 2005.
01/21/2005 Call for Papers: First International Workshop on Business Process Intelligence
(BPI 05) in Nancy, France, September 5, 2005.
01/21/2005 Intergraph awarded contract for mobile workforce management by Kansas City Power
and Light.
01/20/2005 ProClarity recognizes excellence in business intelligence with announcement of
award finalists.
01/20/2005 SAIC program receives NTSA 2004 Modeling and Simulation Award.
01/19/2005 Paisley Consulting enhances CARDmap for compliance of Sarbanes-Oxley and evolving
Basel II requirements.
01/19/2005 Industry visionary, Thomas Koulopoulos, headlines Geospatial World 2005.
01/19/2005 Standard Bank adopts Fair Isaac's TRIAD System to improve credit risk management
strategies.
01/19/2005 Cypress Software Systems launches Mark IV Release 2.0; new features enhance loan
origination processes, address new regulatory requirements..
01/18/2005 Intergraph's mobile resource management solutions deployed by Cobb County, Georgia,
following successful pilot project.
01/18/2005 Retail Decisions launches evolutionary technology in the fight against retail fraud.
01/17/2005 Mary Kay, Inc. recognized for implementing supply chain solutions.
01/17/2005 Brookshire Grocery Company renews license for DemandTec Software.
01/17/2005 Brookstone chooses Evant Solutions to optimize planning and forecasting for its
retail stores.
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2005 by D. J. Power. Please send your
questions to daniel.power@dssresources.com.
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