Decision-Making Models In Web Development

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/23/decision-making-models-in-web-development/

• SHEL—Software, Hardware, Environment, Liveware
• DODAR—Diagnose, Options, Decide, Assign, Review
• NITS—Nature, Intentions, Time, Specials

When was the last time you made a decision? A big one. What was the outcome? Was it good, and how did you get to that outcome? Every day we all make plenty of decisions without a thought to how we structure them or the basis on which we make them. We simply make them. We’re lucky that we work in an industry in which erroneous decisions may have serious financial consequences but rarely, if ever, costs lives.

In fields such as aviation and health care, bad decisions can have massive repercussions. As a result, a lot of cash has been spent studying the human factor and developing methods of reducing error. After all, you’d like to think that the person in the cockpit is fully capable of caring for an expensive jet and its passengers.

These studies have led to many conclusions and insights on human behavior, and they have also helped to develop formal decision-making and error-checking processes for people involved in making big decisions. These are models we can learn from and apply to our everyday choices, big and small.