3 Amazingly Intelligent Web Services That Help You Make Complex Decisions

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

A good decision making service understands and celebrates the fact that everyone is different.  Whether it’s to deciding what to eat, what gadget to buy, or even what to wear, the individual’s tastes usually matter much more than what any critic or reviewer thinks.  Here are 3 really intelligent free web services which cut through the clutter of choices and help you make decisions based on who you are, and what you’re looking for.

1. How to make a decision about what’s important to you

˜Let Simon Decide’ is a web service which allows you to quickly compute decisions based on

• alternatives (for example, a list of schools to join)
• decision making factors (for example, students per class)
• and how important and how well you rate those factors to be

This is by far the most open ended of the services described here as everything is decided by you.  ˜Let Simon Decide’ is just helping you do the calculations and tell you what the best decision is.  While this would result in probably the most tailored solution for you, it also relies on you to know your facts before making a decision. 

˜Let Simon Decide’ will also recommend you factors picked by other people so you can consider them, but when you’re going to score factors on how good they are, you may need to have some base knowledge on the topic first.  For example how good the flash on a camera is.  In the end though, once you do your homework, this is the perfect way to tabulate and affirm any complex decision you make.

2. How to make a decision based on who you are

˜Hunch’ takes a completely different spin from ˜Let Simon Decide’.  Rather than rely mainly on your own input, Hunch takes into consideration who you are, and recommends a solution based on what worked for members in the Hunch community who are ˜like you’.  To make the most of Hunch, you start by answering a whole slew of seemingly random questions, but don’t let that put you off as you don’t NEED to answer the questions, it just helps Hunch know more about you, and these questions are well known to be quirky and fun.

When it comes to solving specific problems, Hunch will ask you a guided set of question based on your topic, and then compute the best decision for you based on your input and what it knows about you.  Hunch is less flexible when it comes to topics compared to ˜Let Simon Decide’, but it is growing everyday, and because it guides you through a customized set of questions based on the decision you’re trying to make, AND it takes into account what other people like you have chosen, it is one of the most powerful and accurate tools out there for decision making.

3. How to decide on a product based on the attributes you’re looking for

˜Measy’ is by far the most elegant and powerful tool I’ve ever seen for deciding on gadget purchases (arguably one of the most complex of all purchases).  While it’s currently limited to helping you choose a Digital Camera, HDTV, E-Reader, Netbook and Smartphone (with new segments added gradually), the way it steps you through the decision making process is brilliant.

You take very specialized and customized quizzes, and they take great pains in explaining all the fuzzy gadget jargon into plain English, and reassures you about the mini-decisions you make during the quiz so that once your final decision is tabulated, it’s incredibly transparent and you can feel very assured with your purchase. 

Measy also takes into account reviews online, and matches your input to what each product is good at, so it does all the product homework for you as well when it shows you it’s recommendations.  This should definitely be your first stop before making any gadget purchase.

So there you have it, 3 excellent web services which help you make intelligent decisions quickly.  Do you use any other tools to make decisions?  Tell us in the comments :)