Named Cows

For centuries, farmers have given names to cows on the farm. Bessie. Jackson. Mildred. Any number of names to tell them apart. It sounds funny, maybe a little endearing, but the truth is that this simple fact holds a wealth of knowledge about human psychology and what goes in to how we make decisions. It turns out that if we do not have a name for something we see, a word in our language for which to describe it, it is very difficult for us to distinguish it from the surroundings, and even harder for us to talk about it.

When it comes to human decision making, the logic that wires together our brains is full of amazing little quirks. Bits of irrationality that impair our ability to make sound, unbiased, rational decisions. By understanding these decision traps, putting names to them, and starting to use these names in our everyday conversations, we begin to become more self-aware of how our brains are arriving at decisions, and hopefully start to make better ones.

Named Cows is a fun, social way to do just that -- to give names to the "cows" that affect how we make decisions -- and share them with our friends. The app contains a dictionary of human decision making concepts ("Spotlight Effect", "Confirmation Bias", "Principle of Charity", etc.), and lets us both learn more about them, and also share stories on Facebook about how you have witnessed these cows in your daily life. By sharing anecdotes about the quirks of our decision making process using the cows by name, we can spread the gospel of sound decision making to the world!

The app requires a Facebook account for sign-on. Cow sighting stories you submit via the app are posted on your Facebook wall with a link to a description about the particular decision trap you experienced, so your friends can understand more about what the cows are all about.

The concepts in this app are inspired by Neil Bearden's Management Decision Making course at INSEAD, the Business School for the World. The app is warmly dedicated both to Neil and the Decision Sciences Department at INSEAD.

更新履歴
A Named Cows update with a few fun new features in time for the new school year:

- Cow Feed tab: See what cows your friends have been sharing without going to Facebook.
- Cow Points tab: Challenge your friends to be the top on the cow points leaderboard: Accumulate points for each cow sighting you post and like you receive on Facebook.
- Help Screen: At first login and from the About tab there is now a help screen to introduce you to the app.
- Your cow posts on Facebook now point to a clean new website where non-users can read about each decision trap you post, to help them understand what this is all about.
- Graphics updated for Retina display.

Enjoy, and don't stop sharing what you learned in MDM once you graduate! Keep posting those cows!