You can use Heatmap Voting as a precursor to Dot Voting to help zero in on the features or parts of ideas that the team considers to be impactful. In this method, team members get an unlimited amount of smaller dots. They can then use as many dots as they want to vote on specific features in all the Solution Sketches, versus voting for an entire sketch. This should be done rather quickly, no more than 5 minutes. The intention is to create a heatmap on the sketches that shows which features the team as a whole thinks are worth prototyping. This would generally be followed by a discussion of the features and then a round of prioritization voting.

Directions:

Time: 10 min
Activity: Group

1. Use smaller dots than you did in the dot voting method.
2. Team members can use as many dots as they need to vote for specific sketch features.
3. Remind the team that they’re not voting for an entire Solution Sketch, but for features within all the sketches.
4. As always, prior to voting, review the business problem, the goals, and success metrics so everyone knows what the voting criteria is and remind the team this is a deciding vote.