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Related Experiment Videos

Do design decisions depend on "dictators"?

David A Broniatowski1

  • 1Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, The George Washington University, 800 22nd St. NW #2700, Washington, DC 20052, USA.

Research in Engineering Design
|March 20, 2018
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Combining preferences in design decisions is often irrational. This study introduces "anigrafs" to structure preferences, significantly reducing irrational outcomes and showing when single decision-makers are truly necessary.

Area of Science:

  • Engineering Design
  • Decision Theory
  • Computational Social Science

Background:

  • Axiomatic decision theory suggests combining stakeholder preferences leads to irrational outcomes, necessitating a single
  • dictator
  • for design decisions.
  • Heuristic approaches, however, are widely used in practice, indicating value in aggregate decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To reconcile axiomatic and heuristic approaches in design decision-making.
  • To demonstrate that combining preferences can be rational under specific conditions.
  • To develop a method for assessing the likelihood of irrational outcomes in group design decisions.

Main Methods:

  • Introducing "anigrafs"—graph-theoretic structures representing empirically motivated restrictions on preference ordering.
Keywords:
AnigrafArrow’s theoremDecision-based designMental modelsSimulationTrajectory mapping

Related Experiment Videos

  • Utilizing computational simulations to assess the probability of irrational group outcomes based on anigraf structures.
  • Employing an empirical case study to extract anigrafs from survey data and using model selection for goodness-of-fit analysis.

    • Main Results:

    • Even minimal structural constraints (anigrafs) significantly reduce the likelihood of irrational group preferences.
    • Stronger anigraf restrictions result in probabilities of irrational preferences not exceeding 5%.
    • Demonstrated a method to extract anigrafs from real-world preference data.

    Conclusions:

    • Axiomatic consistency can be integrated with empirical data to determine the necessity of single decision-makers.
    • The anigraf framework provides a computational tool to evaluate the rationality of group design decisions.
    • This research bridges theoretical decision-making with practical engineering design applications.