Playbook for universal design

Universal design methods for more inclusive solutions

Voting with stickers Add/remove

Purpose:

The purpose is to narrow down the solution space to the ideas that accommodate the criteria for the final solution. The participants will be voting for concepts by using stickers.

Step by step Facilitating tips Materials needed Goes well with

Tips to include participants who are not able to:

See

If the participants can not see they can not place a sticker physically (unless the concepts are communicated with braille (tactile dots) which is how many blind people feel their way) they could just speak out loud what they would vote for.

Hold

If the participants can not hold onto a sticker and place it, a helper or the facilitator could place the sticker.

Move

If the participants can not control movement and can therefore not place a sticker, the participant could tell where he/she thinks it should be placed and the facilitator or a helper could place it as it would still be nice with the visual output.

Focus

Depending on the ability being limited according to not being able to focus because of distractions or because of time crunch - either reduce time spent or increase the time spent for brainstorming.

Hear

If the participants can not hear the method could be explained through sign language or a written explanation could be provided.

Overview

Input

Concept proposals or ideas. All participants should be familiar with all concept proposals prior.

Output

Concept proposals that have potential to be further developed.

Complexity

Moderate

Time

10-15 minutes

Participants

15+

Activity

  • Understand all concept proposals 
  • Compare concept proposals according to criteria 
  • Choose which concept is the best contender for each criteria

Step by step:

  1. Explain that it is time to narrow down the solution space by voting on the concept proposals in accordance to some criteria.

  2. Make sure that all concept proposals are understood by the participants and that they are available to look at while voting.

  3. You as a facilitator might have some criteria that you would like the final solution to live up to. Use these as guidindlies for voting and make the participants vote for one criteria at a time.

  4. Ask your participants to vote for the concept that is e.g. most intuitive (5 min).

  5. Ask the participants to vote for the concept in regards to another criteria and so on (5 min per criteria).

  6. Give the participant different types of stickers for each criteria e.g. most intuitive could be a green sticker, second criteria blue and so on.

  7. Provide an overview for the participants of the final result (5 min).

When doing this method you should consider:

Ask the participants to vote for their favorite besides voting for the predefined criteria.

It can be a good idea to define criteria together with the participants, as they would feel more engaged and taken serious.

If there is time, ask the participants to elaborate why they placed their sticker as they did after each round of voting.

If the participants are blind and therefore have to remember how each concept proposal is it will be beneficial to have a limited number of concepts for them to vote between. The more concepts they have to remember the higher the risk is for them to mix them up.

Materials needed:

Stickers – one type of sticker/color for each criteria the participants needs to vote for.