Playbook for universal design

Universal design methods for more inclusive solutions

Pitching and voting Add/remove

Purpose:

The purpose of this tool is to pitch each concept proposal in order to narrow down the solution space. The pitches are used to find a common ground for how to present each concept proposal before voting which concept(s) to further detail

Step by step Facilitating tips Materials needed Goes well with

Tips to include participants who are not able to:

See

If the participants are not capable of seeing the concept proposals, one would have to be creative to communicate the concepts. One way could be to have a prototype for each group for each concept proposal. This would ensure that the participants can feel the prototype when it is being pitched.

Speak

If the participants can not speak sign language, powerpoint with text or a video with text could be played.

Hear

If the participants can not hear the pitch could be performed with sign language or the pitch could be given as a manuscript.

Focus

f the participants have a hard time focusing the time range could be adjusted either to being shorter or longer depending on the need.

Overview

Input

Concept proposals or ideas that can be pitched.

Output

Voting between concepts

Complexity

Moderate to complex

Time

15-20 minutes

Participants

15+

Activity

  • prepare a pitch 
  • communicate a concept to others 
  • think somewhat complex

Step by step:

  1. Divide your participants in groups of 2 or 3.

  2. Each group is given a concept proposal if they do not already have one.

  3. Ask each group to prepare a 2 min pitch of the solution. The pitch should include:

    • Problem it is solving
    • Key features
    • The value it creates

  4. Give the participants 15 minutes to prepare their pitches. Let them know that they are welcome to use powerpoint, storyboard etc. The format is free as long as they stick to the three bullets they have to address.

  5. Ask the participants to pitch for 2 minutes and ask them to be open for questions.

  6. Ask the participants not pitching to ask questions (2-5 min).

  7. Once all questions have been answered we recommend you to follow up with a voting method where the participants should vote for their e.g favorite, the most intuitive etc.

When doing this method you should consider:

There is a risk that the participants will vote for the concept they pitched basically because that is the one they might have worked the most with. This will make them biased and therefore more prone to voting for that concept. If you want to avoid that you could determine that the participants are not allowed to vote for the concept they pitched.

The method does not include time for the participants to get familiar with the concept proposal why it would be beneficial to have a method prior that familiarizes the participants with all concept proposals.

If there are many concept proposals e.g. 50 but there are only 15 participants (5 groups) it could be a good idea to narrow down the concepts to 5 before pitching and voting.

When you move on to the voting part you could either use voting with stickers, ranking through group discussion, spiderweb, blind voting or through matrix sorting.

 

Materials needed:

stickers, voting box or template depending on the type of voting you want to proceed with.