This email is part of a larger series on Running effective accessibility workshops.
Last week, I talked about what mindset you need to be able to create lots of ideas quickly, as part of the Create stage in an effective accessibility workshop.
Today, we'll take a stab at what it means to look at all those ideas and prioritise them quickly, in the Evaluate stage. What you want at the end of this stage is a shortlist of the ideas you can spend some time further developing.
Usually, when you think "oh, we have lots of ideas, let's narrow them down," the way you do that is by "talking through them" together. This ultimately leads to a lot of discussion. You say something, your team mate picks up and builds on that, and also begins talking about some other idea that just occurred to them. And someone else runs with that. And so on and so forth.
I've seen this play out more times than I can count. So that's not how I think you can prioritise a list of ideas effectively.
I don't think the people are the problem. We're naturally inclined to have opinions and to voice them out. Sometimes loudly and proudly. And then be stubborn and mistake opinions for facts.
No. If you want to make quick decisions and move on, lots of talking isn't what's going to do it. So I have a solution where you don't have to talk and instead prioritise a large amount of ideas quickly. If you remember from last time, I like this concept of working together, alone.
Most of the exercises you'll run through in the Evaluate stage will involve some sort of silent voting process.
One way to do it is with voting dots, where every workshop participant gets a fixed number of voting dots they have to distribute however they see fit among the ideas in front of them.
It doesn't have to be voting dots though. And I have a fun exercise you can try out called I'd Pay For That!
Here's how you play it.
- Time needed: 5 - 10 minutes
- Participants: 4 to 20
- Materials: Monopoly money and double sided tape
You'll of course need a list of ideas to prioritise in the form of post it notes on a whiteboard or wall.
You, or the facilitator, should introduce the game by saying:
We're going to play a game called I'd pay for that. The purpose of the game is to quickly assess the ideas on the whiteboard. We're playing this game because we want to understand where our priorities lie.
And then start explaining the steps of the game:
- Each of you gets a pile of Monopoly cash. On the back of each bill, I've stuck a piece of double sided tape. You'll each have $100 to spend. You each have four $20 bills, one $10 and two $5 bills.
- Looking at the ideas on the whiteboard, you'll need to spend all your money on the idea or ideas you'd like to develop further. When you see an idea you want to support, stick your money next to it.
- You can spend all your money on one idea, or divide it as you see fit amongst multiple ideas. You can't break the bills into smaller units though.
- You have 5 minutes to do this.
At the end, tally up the ideas and see which ones received the most funding. You'll have a nice list of priorities that you can work with.
I ran this exercise once in a remote setting and we had loads of fun seeing fictitious money being spent.
Next time
The next stage is the Develop stage. This is the only stage where talking and discussions are allowed and encouraged. I'll see you next week.