Situated DSS for personal finance management: Design and evaluation

The situated decision support system (SDSS) model is a type of DSS that maintains close links with the target environment and has capabilities for sensing, monitoring, decision support, and limited decision making, action generation, and implementation. But though a generic description of SDSS had been provided, no empirical test has been made to prove its value. We performed experiments using human subjects to test an SDSS prototype. Personal finance management was chosen as an application domain, and the design and implementation of the SDSS prototype is discussed. The experiments involve subjects who carry out their normal shopping tasks in a simulated setup. One group of subjects were provided with SDSS support, while the others used a traditional decision support model. Overall, the results attest to the superiority of the SDSS model in terms of key decision performance variables.