Criteria scan and refinement

Scan your ideas based on success criteria and refine the results

The Criteria Scan

During the Criteria Scan process all ideas are evaluated based on the success criteria as defined in the briefing.

Ideally participants pick one criterion (they feel comfortable with) and then rate all ideas based on the selected success criteria.

BrainStore suggest a scale from 1 - 10.

The Idea Machine Engine provides a very easy tool for this step.

Participants who feel comfortable with more than one criterion can pick more than one criterion.

The results of the Criteria Scan are very interesting.

They show:

  • Which ideas pass all criteria
  • Which ideas have issues with certain criteria (and thus should not be pursued) and
  • Which ideas pass most criteria but there is a high polarization with certain ideas. These ideas often have high potential.

Important

The Criteria Scan is the first part of the process which is not anonymous. We need to know who provided which rating to have good discussions.

The Refinement Workshop Part 1

During the refinement workshop participants come together and the facilitator presents the results of the Criteria Scan and the goal: to identify a set of ideas to be pursued. In general about 10 - 20 ideas.

There are three ways at looking at the results

By average

This view shows the leading ideas based on the average of all averages for all criteria.

If you have good values here you can be sure that the idea is solid.

If you have very similar ideas here feel free to pick one and add aspects of the others and drop those.

By polarization

This view shows the ideas with the highest polarization of all criteria.

That means you might have ratings at 2 point and others at 9 points.

This is an ideal situation for the facilitator to initiate the discussion about the idea.

Simply look who provided what ratings and then let the participants discuss the one criterion and work towards a solution.

You can amend the title and description, so that the participants feel comfortable with the wording.

By number of likes

It might happen that ideas with many likes don't pass the Criteria Scan - you might have to drop this idea.

This is no problem as long as you have good reasons to drop the ideas and can answers the question "what happen to this idea - it got so many likes".

It can be very helpful also to sort the list based on likes to get additional ideas you'd like to set to "yes".

The Refinement Workshop Part 2

When you and the participants are happy with the set of ideas move on to the Idea Selection Menu.

Copy the Selected Ideas from the Criteria Scan and your Ideas will be ready in the Idea Selection menu.

You could start now with the Idea Selection, if you wanted to...

However it's recommended to expand scope by

looking at

  • the order of the ideas by changing the sorter number (the ideas should be in a nice sequence, mix potentially polarizing ideas with potentially broadly accepted ideas, don't start with a potentially polarizing idea and don't end the presentation with one.

  • add briefings for the Idea Designers

  • and create nice teasers (the purpose of teasers is to prepare participants of the Idea Selection for the next idea - without disclosing it.

Criteria Scan using the Idea Machine Engine