Design Management Group

Dot sticking

A good way to engage a wide number of stakeholders in concept selection. Simple and easy to administer, but does not necessarily provide rich feedback behind the reasons or motivations for choice.

Description

The dot sticking approach is a good selection tool, when there a wide array of potential or competing ideas as well as a large number of stakeholders. By allocating each stakeholder with a number of sticky 'dots', they can allocate one, some or all of them to their preferred choice.

Approach

Define concepts

Ensure that each concept is presented to a similar level of detail, sufficient to enable suitably qualified stakeholders to make an informed selection

Determine the stakeholders

Who is to make the choice? Is it to be just a representative sample of internal stakeholders, or will external stakeholders also be involved

Allocate 'dots'

Allocate each stakeholder with a number of 'dots'. Depending upon the number of concepts, this can range from 3 to 5. Different coloured dots can be used for a variety of purposes. Each person could have a different coloured dot to assign to his or her most preferred choice - this can be useful in a tiebreak. Alternatively, different coloured dots can be given to representatives of different functions or customers from different market segments, to determine whether there is any bias depending upon perspective.

Vote & filter

Following the initial voting, it can be useful to filter out the results and have a second pass, this time only keeping in the strongest contenders.

Capture likes and dislikes

It is important to capture some of the reasoning behind the selection, so it can be useful to encourage participants to note likes and dislikes on post-it notes and also attach these to the different solutions. This will help generate understanding as to why some ideas are preferred over others. It also enables strong features of rejected ideas to be kept.