The evaluation of GRADD: a GDSS supporting asynchronous and distributed meetings

GRADD is a group decision support system (GDSS) targeted at asynchronous and distributed meetings. The distinctive features of GRADD are the combination of a rationale model for discussion support, voting techniques for deliberation activities and automatic norm control for process structure definition and control. This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of GRADD´s functionality with regard to these distinctive features. The experiment, though empirical, enabled us to detect the strong and weak points of the proposed functionality and/or of the current GRADD prototype, and to establish future extensions and improvements