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Teams need to come to a consensus about which design they choose to build. Many times this process can lead to conflict within a team. Students must remain mature and open to all ideas when deciding on the best idea to build. Sometimes students invest a lot of time and energy during the research, design, and development of idea phases of the engineering design process and become attached to their design ideas. A decision matrix is the best way to look at all of the contributed designs in an unbiased way using criteria.
A decision matrix is a tool to help you decide between multiple options by scoring them against different criteria. A decision matrix can help your team effectively and efficiently make tough decisions.
There are two ways to do this, a simple decision matrix and a weighted objective tool.
Decision Matrix
Decision Matrix
The steps to completing a Decision Matrix are:
1. Create a table and list all of the criteria along the top as the column headings.
2. List the design ideas along the left as the row headings.
3. Score each on a scale from 1 (poor) to 4 (very good). Yes or no question get a 2 (yes) or 1 (no).
4. Add up the row of scores when the table is complete and the row with the highest score is the winning design.
Weighted Objective Tool
Weighted Objective Tool
A weighted objective tool weights the criteria so that some are worth more than others. The example below used a scale of 1-10, which was then multiplied by the weight for that criteria. Ensure your teams decide on a scale and weighting before filling out the weighted objective tool. There is more in the VEX Curriculum on the Engineering Design Process.
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