Voting — for facilitators

Samvinas

• Pipe in the items to vote on (usually from Brainstorm or Clustering).
• Set the max votes per person in settings — a good rule of thumb is about a third of the number of items.
• Put a clear criterion in the Prompt ("Which three would have the biggest impact?").
• Watch the live ranking; Lock when voting's done.

Voting adds vote counts to items, so a downstream tool can filter by a minimum number of votes (e.g. only items with two or more votes flow into Value / Doability).

Paper and pen

You need: sheets of dot stickers (three to five per person), and the wall of numbered sticky notes from the previous activity.

• Number the notes if they aren't already — dots need addresses.
• Say the criterion out loud and write it above the wall.
• Hand out the dots — about a third as many as there are items — and let everyone vote at the same time, milling at the wall. Stacking several dots on one favourite is allowed; say so.
• One failure mode to avoid: voting one person at a time. Watching dots accumulate herds the room — get everyone deciding before anyone approaches the wall, then vote in a scrum.
• Harvest: write each item's dot count on its note, pull the leaders onto a fresh flip chart, and photograph the whole wall before anything moves.

When & why

Reach for Voting straight after a generating tool, when the field is wide and the group needs a quick, low-stakes way to narrow it.

Converging well is a skill of its own — see convergence for affirmative-first choosing and why you keep the novel option alive a little longer than feels comfortable.

• Say the criterion out loud — people vote very differently for "most exciting" vs "most feasible."
• Voting is a temperature check, not a verdict. Use it to narrow the field, then discuss the top items.
• What usually follows: a criteria-rich focusing tool — Value / Doability or Ranking — or straight into Elaboration if the winners are clear.