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Many architects put a lot of effort in rationalising the process of architecture decision making. These rational approaches to decision making typically break down in two stages: the problem identification stage and the problem solution stage. The idea behind the rational approach is that decision making follows a systematic method of logical reasoning steps that - if performed correctly - automatically lead to the optimal solution for the given problem. Behind this idea however hide two flawed assumptions: i) the world is well defined and ii) there's enough time to consider all the necessary combinations. To make the rational approach in complex decision making come to a decision on time, the architect is by definition forced to oversimplify.
The alternative to the rational approach is often referred to as intuitive decision making. A simple but crucial mistake is to define intuition (probably based on a significant amount of unconscious 'computation') as less rational. There's reason to believe that the opposite might hold. In my opinion it's safer to assume that in a complex, ill defined world the architect should trust his intuition and not the outcome of a systematic decision making process. As many rational approaches also come with modelling tools, the benefit of taking the 'rational' approach and using the accompanying tool is that the architect can hide a poor decision and lack of experience behind a complex visual web of traces that would even make the most stupid architectural decision look smart and rational.
Not so long ago, in 1955, Nobel price winner Herbert Simon already stated that the task is "to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist." [see: "A behavioral model of rational choice"]. Of course Simon's writing dates back to the time when computers were significantly less powerful then today, but even with this knowledge, I believe his postulates still hold. Simon introduces a 'choosing organism' (human individuals or groups of human individuals) of limited knowledge and ability. He concludes that the discrepancies between this organism's simplified decision model and the reality serve to explain many of the phenomena of organizational behaviour.
To add to the complexity of the architectural decision making process, preferences of stakeholders might show conflicts. These conflicts introduce an additional aspect tot the decision making 'game'. A game that introduces many additional matters to take into account; including the 'tit-for-tat' behaviour of stakeholders. A strategy that crosses the boundaries of the decision at hand. Stakeholders might have encountered one another in another 'game' and carry this experience forward into the strategy for the new game. A history often kept implicit (for understandable reasons) and of course unknown to the architect solving the problem at hand. The good news to this aspect of 'gaming' is that humans on average tend to settle for a satisfactory outcome (and don't strive to optimise). In practice many architects will settle for a sufficient solution and focus on arranging a win-win stakeholder coalition that supports his solution. Approximately 3 decades later Herbert Simon and Associates point out a number of 'especially promising' research directions:
- direct observation of behaviour at the level of the individual and the organization
- empirical study of expert behaviour (basic research on how ill-structured problems are, and can be, solved)
- decision making in organizational settings
- the resolution of conflicts of values (individual and group) and of inconsistencies in belief
- setting agendas and framing problems
[see: Decision Making and Problem Solving ]
As it appears to me that especially in digital architecture these research directions make a lot of sense, it is disappointing to see so that these 'especially promising' directions are completely ignored in most of the digital architectural research.
The content presented in this editorial reflects the personal opinion of the author. Copyright notice: This publication is based on the principle of open content Erik Vermeulen is director of Stichting Digital Architecture and member of the Via Nova Architectura editorial board. He is executive business consultant at Atos Consulting. 
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