About

Dot Voting is a simple way for a team of designers to vote on their best ideas, or for individual designers to vote on each other’s best ideas. You can do dot voting after you have completed Brainstorming (IV), or Brain Sketching (IV), or any time that you need to select your best ideas when designing.


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FIGURE: Vote for your best design ideas by using colour dots.

 

What you need

• A team of designers working together on a design project.
• A quiet place to work, with tables and chairs, and a chalkboard, whiteboard, or pinboard to display the sketches.
• Colour dot stickers (self-adhesive colour dots), or you may use colour markers.
  • Each voter gets allocated a colour.
• About half an hour to do it properly.

 

Method

A team of designers may use dot voting to vote on their best ideas, or a group of individual designers can come together to vote on each other ideas, as follows:

• Work on one design project at a time.
• The designer (or team) picks their best ideas (approximately three to five sketch ideas).
  • They display the sketch ideas somewhere visible, on a table, on a whiteboard, or a pinboard.
• They briefly explain each idea to the participants.
• The participant audience listens and asks questions if they have any, which the designer or team will answer.
• Each participant then votes for the ideas by asking themselves: Is it a good idea? Do I like this idea?
  • If the answer is ‘yes,’ they attach a colour dot sticker to that sketch idea, or make a mark with a colour marker.
• Once the project or projects have been voted on, the designer or teams will have received the opinions of their fellow designers, they will be able to add up the votes to find the most popular sketch idea.

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Tip

• The designer or team may also take part by voting on their own sketch ideas, if they wish.