Operators are Only Human: Facilitating Situated Decision Support in Industrial Environments

This thesis presents a review of the state of the art in Decision Making literature to elicit four current challenges in supporting Decision Making through system design, in situated industrial environments. A collaboration project with the Norwegian Aluminum industry identifies the need of continuous workplace-education for their operators. They lack knowledge of the processes they support. A thorough literature review into human decision making, automation, and decision support systems provides a set of four current challenges for supporting human decisions: Decision Automation Systems, Feedback, Information Presentation, and Learning. These challenges are combined with human decision literature, indicating opportunities for solutions. A design of a screen-based Decision Support System using a theoretical case domain demonstrates an implementation of opportunities from the current challenges, into novel solutions. The article recommends further research into the applications of the current challenges of Decision Support Systems in industrial environments, by implementing and evaluating a solution based on the opportunities of information systems in a situated environment