Conceptual design model for youth personal decision aid

Youth tend to face many areas of decision making with multiple choices. However, existing decision making tools are too complex and are not easily understood by the youth. Besides, complex and structured mathematical techniques are not preferred by the users as compared to direct and straightforward design model. Additionally, theoretical foundation for decision making is not adequately considered in designing and developing decision aid technologies. Therefore, there is a need in considering and including relevant multi-criteria technique, model and theory in the development of personal decision aids. The main aim for this study is to construct a conceptual
design model for Youth Personal Decision Aid (YouthPDA). The following objectives are outlined to support the major aim: i) to identify relevant decision making criteria, techniques, and theoretical foundations for YouthPDA, ii) to construct a conceptual design model for YouthPDA using the identified decision
making techniques, criteria, and theoretical foundation, iii) to validate the conceptual
design model of YouthPDA through expert review, and iv) to measure the correlation between usefulness dimensions of YouthPDA via prototyping. Design research is chosen as the approach and three main phases are adopted which are Problem Identification, Solution Design, and Evaluation. YouthPDA is developed as a
personalised decision aid for youth to help them choose their study and career paths. By integrating data from the youth personality traits and multiple intelligences, YouthPDA functions as a recommender system that works on rule-based reasoning. The usefulness of YouthPDA is measured in the evaluation phase. Findings from 189 respondents show that the proposed YouthPDA is useful for youth as their decision
making tool. Accuracy, Decision Strategy, Satisfaction, Knowledge Acquisition and
Overall Usefulness are the dimensions being measured and correlated to put forward the conclusion. The selected multi-criteria, techniques and theories embedded into the validated conceptual design model are the main contributions of this study