Dot voting

Dot voting is one of many idea selection techniques. It is popularised through its use in the Google Design Sprint. Dot voting can be used to make quick decisions without endless group discussions. It is a good method to get equal input from people who are not very outspoken in group discussions. The outcome is a ‘winner’, the idea with most of the stickers.

How to

1. Hang all ideas / sketches / concepts on a wall.
2. Hand out dot stickers to participants. Every participant gets the same amount of stickers.
3. Allow participants to place dot stickers on ideas, or parts of ideas, they prefer.
4. The idea(s) with the most stickers are chosen. If there are multiple ‘winners’ next steps can be to combine ideas, or to continue with multiple ideas.

Tips

• Make or repeat selection criteria upfront, based on which you can judge the ideas.
• Use this technique if you have a relatively small set of concepts to review. With a large amount it becomes harder to process all ideas simultaneously. If you want to decide between a lot of ideas (>15) ,it might be better to create a decision matrix for example.
• Make this a silent exercise, so people are not influenced by others’ opinions.
• Put a time limit on the exercise so people are forced to make quick decisions.
• Adapt the duration of the exercise to the amount of ideas that are being reviewed. Make sure everyone has enough time to view all ideas before deciding.
• There are variations of this exercise possible. For example, there is a decider who gets a‘supervote’.Some participants get more stickers than others. Every participant has to make a top 3 and divide the stickers accordingly. (3,2,1 stickers on 1 idea)
• If stickers are divided over 2 ideas that are quite similar, combine them.

What do you need

Learn more

• http://dotmocracy.org/dot-voting/
• Chapter ‘Deciding’ in ‘Sprint’ by Jake Knapp