Select ideas with dot voting

After ideation, teams need a way to choose from multiple ideas. Dot voting can aid in this decision.

Preparation

5 mins

Delivery

15 mins

What is it

After teams have presented their ideas, dot voting can be a quick, democratic way of prioritising the most promising ones based on group sentiment. It's as simple as sticking a dot on the ideas you like to converge upon the best routes to explore further.

How to do it

1 Set up your work space

Find a clean surface (e.g. whiteboard, flipchart) to work on. Write a brief explanation of what dot voting is on the top of the workspace so that everyone can see it.

2 Shortlist the ideas

Make the ideas to be voted on as distinct as possible by bundling the ones that are similar or overlapping. Categorise ideas into themes if your aim is to end with select ideas per theme.

3 Give participants the dots

Calculate the number of sticky dots to hand out to each participant to be able to reach your desired outcome. Pass out the sticky dots. Select ideas with dote voting ilustration

4 Tell participants to cast their votes

Ask the participants to scan all of the ideas before voting. If you have split the ideas into themes, remind the group to vote at least once per theme.

5 Reorder the ideas

After the vote, rearrange the ideas based on the number of dots they received. Move the ideas with the fewest votes to the bottom.

6 Review the results

Confirm that the ideas that didn't receive many votes weren't left behind by mistake. If there is a clear winner among the ideas voted on, ask the group if they would like to move forward with this. If it's a close call, facilitate a discussion to reach a consensus.

What you will need

Stickers

This tool and any associated downloadable assets are provided under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike CC BY-SA 4.0 International License.

Select ideas with dot voting