New survey resource! All Our Ideas

Check out this nifty new tool for doing a quick survey to rank items: http://www.allourideas.org/



This is a great resource for institutions like museums and libraries that want to poll visitors on potential new services or programs. Imagine one of those staff meetings where you create a wish list of things you'd like to do for your visitors. This list may look something like:

- Validate parking
- Provide more food options in vending/snack area
- Have more staff in exhibit areas to give visitors more information about exhibits
- Install more benches, chairs in gallery areas
- Section off part of the library as a "No Shhhh Zone" that people can use for group work
- Offer story time programs on Saturday mornings

It's great for staff to generate ideas about how to improve visitor services. With All Our Ideas you can quickly take it to the next step and ask visitors to respond to the wish list. The site takes your list and gives visitors 2 of the options from the list and they have to vote for one item over the other (or select "I don't know"). They repeat this process over and over in a matter of seconds or minutes. The data is aggregated to a ranking of options, along with fun visualizations of the data.

A great feature of the tool is that respondents can also add their own idea. That idea is then put into the list to be voted on by others. What a fun way to bring fresh ideas to the table - and have immediate visitor feedback on them.

I will add my cautionary, unsolicited advise about asking visitors for ideas. When you ask visitors for ideas, ask about the things they are experts on, not the things you are an expert on.

For example, if you ask visitors "What kind of programs do you want us to do?", you inevitably gets answers that are way out of your budget, mission, or capacity. But what do you expect? You're the experts in program development - you know the profession and the feasibility. On the other hand, if you ask parents/caregivers "What new play items would you like to see in the baby area?", they can fill you in on the latest trends in baby toys that they talk about every week at playgroup.

Keep visitors talking about what they know about, and you can translate that into exceptional experiences that meet their needs.