2.1.10 Making Design Decisions

There is a critical caveat to the Bumponomics framework as presented in this book.

Under strictly applied Idealized Design, the ultimate design of the system must be a group product. The group preparing such a design requires a procedure for reaching design decisions. Such decisions should ideally be made by consensus—meaning complete agreement to proceed in practice, even if not necessarily in principle. Total ideological agreement on what is the best thing to do is not required; only agreement on what is worth doing.

For most design decisions, practical agreement is easily obtained. But for complex vectors where it is difficult to obtain consensus, the group recourse consists of designing a test of the alternatives—a test whose results all participants agree to abide by.

We, the initial authors of Bumponomics, have not yet followed this fundamental rule of interactive planning because we have not yet involved you, the global stakeholder, in the actual design.

This is precisely what the BUMPS.app platform will do.

While this book outlines the theoretical Master Architecture, the BUMPS software platform serves as the literal mechanism for global interactive planning. It is the engine that will allow highly distributed stakeholders to reach consensus, map realities, and design tests of alternatives at scale.