Development of a Design Environment for End Users to build the Target-Relevant Decision Support Tools in Rural Industry

Abstract

Decision support systems (DSS) developed by end users have had limited success in rural operations. This paper will discuss the development stages of a new tool for improving the DSS development process in the rural industries. The object of this project is to develop an end user enabled design environment (EUEDE) which will allow a non-technical computer user to build target-relevant decision support tools. The resultant design environment aims to allow the end user to re-use and share their knowledge within a specific business context. This approach will facilitate flexibility to build relevant DSS's for an end user's specific decision requirements. The proposed design architecture will be transferable to other rural industries such as beef cattle and cotton. Theoretically, this approach anticipates extending development technologies of decision support tools to overcome traditional difficulties, by improving the context and relevance of development strategies and encourage end users to develop their own solutions. A qualitative field study using focus group approach will be adopted to acquire expert knowledge with an evolutionary prototyping approach being employed at this stage in order to construct a knowledge base for an expert system (ES). Utilising the decision making knowledge from the ES knowledge base, a generic design environment will be subsequently developed that will allow end user development of their own systems. The involvement of key industry stakeholders will be vital throughout both stages of EUEDE development.