BIRBAL a computer-based devil´s advocate

A computational framework that can form the basis for devil´s advocate role playing is developed. The framework consists of a comprehensive set of strategies for stimulating and challenging a decision maker. The strategies are at the operational level and cover the various aspects of devil´s advocate behavior such as raising pointed questions and generating challenges, arguments and criticism. It is shown how these ideas can be implemented by presenting the design and implementation details of the working prototype BIRBAL. The author identifies areas for fruitful future research and emphasizes the use of exploratory systems development as a research paradigm for DSS (decision support systems) research