Simon’s Decision Phases and User Performance: An Experimental Study

ABSTRACT

What specific activities do users engage in when using decision support software to solve complex problems and how do they unfold? This paper describes an experimental study where managers solved decision tasks of varying complexity on different computing devices. A video recording of their actions while using an assigned computing device (laptop or tablet) was created, then coded and analyzed using Simon’s three phase model of decision making. Differences in time spent during the Intelligence, Design and Choice phases were found and analyzed to determine if time spent could explain task performance. This study was the first to conduct an experiment with mid-level managers in the field to provide a more detailed description of how Simon’s model of decision-making occurs in practice. This research demonstrates that Simon’s model can be used to analyze decision processes and complements the work done by cognitive/neuroscientists on decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Decision phases
• Simon’s decision framework
• decision process
• task complexity
• task performance
• decision-making
• business intelligence
• recursive decision-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).