All materials on this website are free to download and share. Enjoy!

Have you ever taken part in a decision-making meeting with many people and felt frustrated with the lack of progress?

Have you ever attended a forum or workshop where dozens of people brainstormed a long list of ideas, but there was no sensible way to collectively prioritize all the results and recognize the best suggestions?

I created idea rating sheets to provide a solution for these kinds of challenges.

Idea rating sheets are simple tool to help large groups find agreement

Idea rating is a simple method for recognizing points of agreement among a large number of people. Participants write down ideas on specially designed paper forms called “idea rating sheets” and use pens to fill in one dot per sheet, recording their levels of agreement. The result is a graph-like visual representation of the group’s collective opinion.

Compared to surveys, voting, or typical meeting formats, idea rating provides unique and valuable opportunities. In an idea rating process, every participant can simultaneously present his or her own ideas anonymously in writing. The level of popular support for each idea can be quickly and accurately discovered through the dotting process. Feedback comments for each idea can also be recorded.

Idea rating sheets help people quickly recognize their collective preferences, which can then lead to the crafting of popularly supported plans.

Idea rating sheets have been proven to:

• Recognize collective priorities and direction from all participants.
• Engage and empower diverse groups of people.
• Recognize agreement on unique and specific ideas, as well as general and thematic ideas.
• Give an equal voice to even the quietest of participants.
• Help avoid verbal debates and “soapbox” style speech-making.
• Support friendly discussions while efficiently leading to practical conclusions.
• Provide fully documented results that can be easily turned into action plans.

The idea rating sheets are fun to use. The process takes only minutes to learn and apply.

To start using idea rating sheets, download the blank idea rating sheet and instructions

This website is a volunteer project of Jason Diceman who lives in Toronto, Canada.

“Idea rating sheets” were previously called “Dotmocracy Sheets”.  Learn more at Dotmocracy.org