Improving User and Decision Support System Teamwork: An Approach Based on Shared Mental Models

Social psychology research on teams has shown that team performance improves when team members have a so-called shared mental model (SMM). We observe that a decision support system (DSS) and its user can be viewed as a team whose task is to make a (good) decision. Therefore we argue that it is important for good user-DSS team performance that they have a SMM. In this paper we make precise what it means for a user and DSS to have a SMM. This can be used as the basis for analyzing to what extent a DSS supports the achievement of a SMM, or to design a DSS such that it does this. We apply our framework to a particular negotiation support system, using it to analyze to what extent this DSS facilitates the achievement of a SMM. We propose that the addition of explanation facilities to the DSS can improve sharedness in the user-DSS team.