1

Inventer et imaginer de nouveaux mondes

2

Inventer et imaginer de nouveaux mondes

3

Explorer et développer de nouveaux mondes

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Simuler et réaliser de nouveaux mondes

5

Retourner au et transformer le présent

 

 

Dot voting

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Participants
Any number
Space
A board or wall to list the proposals and ideas that people can vote for
Roles
Helpful if someone leads and passes on the instructions. Everyone else participates by sticking gummies or stickers or crushing raspberries if that is the only way to leave traces.
Material
Arm yourself with stickers, coloured gomettes or whatever else you can find to leave traces
Preparation
Make a list with all the options to choose from. (Probably already happened in the collective process.) Agree on a colour code if needed. (For example: pink is very important, gold not at all).
Duration
This can go quite fast, even though we all have different paces
Group silence

Use

A somewhat boring but equally efficient way to help a group moving from a forest of possibilities to a smaller number of options. A visual tool to make (or reduce) choices in the group.

Protocol

If you have made a list of things to choose from (notions, key words, drivers of change...) gather them on a poster or a board.

To find out which options are considered the most important or most interesting by the group, every participant gets a certain number of ‘dots’ to use (in the form of coloured stickers, gummies, raspberries or anything else you like). If they find one thing on the list very important they can stick all their dots on that thing, or if they prefer they can add their dots on different options on the list. Or anything in between (if for example each participant gets 5 dots, they can use 3 on one thing they find particularly important and the other 2 on 2 other things considered less important).

Once the group is done, you will quite easily see where the group’s emphasis lies. Dot-voting is an easy way to make (or reduce) choices, or see what the group considers as most important. The result of the consultation is visual, and will be obvious to all without any discussion.

Testimony

I used this trick as part of an Open Forum to organise walks in Mons (BE) for the Festival Demain. We had a very large room at our disposal that I had decorated with giant pouffes on the floors. I had set up a wellness centre in a corner, in the middle of circular saws and other work tools, and a thermo-glue station where you could add velvet to t-shirts, etc. After we made the agenda together I suggested that everyone stick a dot on the wall, on the sheets that described the possible workshops to organise. This way we could see which workshops were in demand and we could divide ourselves up guided by the stickers.

It was great that everyone approached the wall at the same time and then the wall was happy and so were we. It was because the dots were golden. It was because we all stood up at the same time. It was because sometimes you get really tired of sitting. It was also a bit silly and touching: like confetti thrown at a photocopier. (I have a friend who counts the circles around him, all the round shapes.

Anna Cz.

Credits

Some of us knew this tool from elsewhere, but Maja Kuzmanovic put dots in our hands in the opening workshop of our research project early 2019. Céline Estenne from Wander Structure uses ‘gomettes’ (French for ‘small pieces of gummed or adhesive paper’) willingly when it comes to cooperation.

This article was scribbled down by Anna Cz. and Diederik P.

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