The Big Picture (Reserach Framework)

Current research project: "Cognition-Driven Decision Process on Business Intelligence Systems"

This research is an attempt toward high degree of user-centered human-computer interaction for better decision making in complex situations with ill-defined goals, uncertainty, time pressure and high personal stake. The fundamental point of view on decision making, in this research, is that humans are superior to computers when handling unstructured problems. Consequently a decision (in complex situations) should be made by humans rather than a computational output of computer programs. Following this view, a framework of cognitive business intelligence (BI) systems is proposed based on cognitive consideration of human situation awareness (SA), mental models, and experience (case). Both human and computer are incorporated into this framework and become components of the unified decision-making system. Human cognition is represented as information object and used to drive the process of human-computer interaction and eventually facilitate the cognition-driven decision process. This research is grounded in BI area. The proposed decision process model and system framework are used to improve the performance of current BI systems, particularly the analytical functionality.

Cognitive Orientation in Decision Support Systems

Cognitive orientation has long been thought of as a very important consideration to decision support systems (DSS). Situation awareness (SA) and mental models, as two key concepts in cognitive psychology, are important for understanding ill-structured problems and making effective decisions. In many dynamic decision-making situations, especially those with high uncertainty, complexity and high personal stake, much research has proven that there is a close connection between SA, mental models and the performance of decision making: good SA and mental models are very likely to lead to good decisions and ultimately good performance. This research develops a conceptual information system framework for cognition-driven decision support system based on cognitive orientation, which is expected to be able to provide better decision support in ill-defined decision situations.