You make a good point though I didn't specifically mention equal voting at all. You could have a small group who, as you say, have their necks on the line or you could have private voting of the 10 top designers in the country using polling software or you could generate criteria and have your small group use the criteria as a starting point for a deeper discussion of the type you suggest. You mention listing the criteria on the board which is a great starting point, because many groups fail to explicitly identify criteria that they are using (that method sounds like the QOC method - Questions-Options-Criteria - that is described in the "design rationale" literature.)
Some time ago, I worked with a group of people who necks were on the line and the use of a group Q-sort on the dimension of 'project risk" for particular requirements worked much as you described with the different items getting much discussion among respected team members and then getting placed into low, medium, and high risks. The discussion for each item often elaborated on what was risky for the different representatives. Chauncey On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Scott Berkun <[email protected]> wrote: > > All of these methods you listed strike me as limiting in they emphasize > equal voting - often I don't believe everyone deserves an equal vote. > Heretical perhaps, but I'd much rather let a small number of people who > will > be held accountable for the final design entirely drive these explorations. > It's their necks on the line. They should at least win or lose on their own > intuitions. > > Having people vote on one sentence, or one sketch, descriptions of ideas is > always a crap-shoot: people are heavily biased to the ideas they're > familiar > with, and they can't be equally familiar with all the ideas. > > With a pile of 50 ideas and only time to explore 5, I'd sit down with the > three or four people most accountable for the final result and talk it out. > I would depend on intuition, debate and persuasion more than any sort of > numerical/polling/ranking system. > > If I did anything "methody", which I'd try to avoid, I do one of two > things: > > 1) Have a list of criteria, or project goals, or desirable attributes up on > the whiteboard during that discussion to help us frame our opinions. > > 2) Make the goal to pick one high risk idea, three medium risk ideas, and > one low risk idea. This frames the problem of picking alternatives as a > risk > portfolio, where our goal is to distribute the creative risks in some way. > This makes it ok to advocate a crazy idea, since that's desirable to fit > the > high risk slot. > > But most importantly, if I didn't have the power to grant this much > authority to those 3 people, my real problem is political, not the quest > for > the perfect number of alternatives. > > -Scott > > Scott Berkun > www.scottberkun.com > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Chauncey Wilson > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 10:26 AM > To: christine chastain > Cc: Dave Malouf; [email protected] > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] How many alternatives, concepts,or sketches are > enough? > > I would be curious to hear what tools colleagues do use for prioritization > of ideas. The key issue here is what the criteria are for choosing ideas. > In the early stages of ideation, the criteria might be different for > choosing what to consider further (the 10 ideas out of 300) versus what to > consider when you move into detailed design. > > Some general methods for prioritization are: > > 1. The monetary method where a sample of people are given a fixed amount > of > "money", a list of ideas or requirements along with their relative costs > and > then asked to "buy" the things of most value. > 2. The criterion matrix where you list the criteria (weighted or > unweighted) and then calculate a score with the top scores meeting more of > the criteria. > 3. Q-sorting where you ask people to sort on an important criteria on a > scale ranging from low to high. > 4. Private voting for the best ideas > 5. Public voting for the best ideas (red dots on the best ideas) 6. > Consensus 7. Decision by a leader 8. Decision by another group 9. The > target method (good for a first cut between good and not-good idea) > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
