Sometimes high value buying or investment decisions can be very complex to make. When buying decision is not entirely based on price rather it is a combination of many subjective and objective criteria like brand, style, comfort, reliability, resale value, maintenance cost etc. then taking a decision on which option to go for becomes very difficult, especially in today’s world where buyers have plenty of alternatives to choose from. So what he needs is a methodology to decide on their final choice which takes into account, both his judgment and an unbiased rational method. To address this need of consumers Mindtree has come up with mDecide – A simple and user friendly decision support iPad app, which combines user’s judgment with pure statistics (a quick AHP) to help him find the best alternative.
This app follows a 5 step simple process:
1) User enters which product he wants to decide on
2) User chooses a few criteria on the basis of which he wants to evaluate his options
3) User rates each option for each criteria
4) User uses scales to do a pairwise comparison of the criteria
5) User clicks the decide button to see the final result
Example:
For example, while buying a house – I spend quite some time deliberating between two options
House 1: was in a fancier address, had a longer drive to office, good house and excellent view
House 2: not such a fancy address, had a much shorter drive to office, was a much better house and had OK views.
Using mDecide I can follow the 5 step to know which house to buy
1) I’ll enter “House” as the name of the product which needs to be decided on
2) Will choose fanciness of address, distance to office, quality of house and view as my criteria of evaluation
3) Will rate House 1 and House 2 on each criteria chosen in step 2. For example,
a. House 1: was in a very fancy address (let’s say 10 on 10), had a long drive to office (6 on 10), good house (8 on 10) and excellent view (9 on 10)
b. House 2: not such a fancy address( 8 on 10), had a much shorter drive to office (9 on 10), was a much better house (9 out of 10) and had OK views (6 on 10).
4) Will pairwise compare the criteria to provide my preference. For example,
a. “Fanciness of address” is thrice more important to me than “Distance to office” 3:1
b. “Distance to office” is twice more important to me than “Quality of house” 2:1
c. “Quality of house” is equally important to me as “View” 1:1
d. “View” is twice more important to me than “Fanciness of address” 2:1
e. “View” is four times more important to me than “Distance to office” 4:1
f. “Fanciness of address” is twice more important to me than “Quality of house” 2:1
5) By clicking the Decide button I can see the score for House 1 and House 2 out of 10 – mDecide will help me quantify what is on my mind by taking into account my own preferences & ratings, and using statistical methods like AHP.
There is no more – head says this but Heart says that - you could even put “Heart Says” as a parameter.
Features:
- Free App
- Customized, so that many type of decisions can be supported
- AHP and other proven statistical methods are used for decision making
- Tutorial is provided to help users to learn the app
- Helps users to re-evaluate and reconsider their decision by dynamically changing parameters
- No network connectivity is required to operate the app