The Scroop technique

Ok, you are the end of a long brainstorming session, you and your group have produced many ideas, and it is time to drawn some conclusions and select the best idea. What to do now? You can use the old, boring dot-voting system, of course, but why don't try out something more engaging?

The Scroop game is new technique for deciding which is the best idea to pursue. It promotes carefully thinking about the options, and it's also fun! Here's how it works:

1. The Scroop game starts where the divergent phase of brainstorming ends. You and your groups have collected all the ideas, on a whiteboard, on sticky notes, or in the shared screen of Neonce, and it is time to decide which idea is worth pursuing further. So, every player (that's how we'll call you and your group members in this guide) writes downs the name of their favorite 5 ideas on cards (if you don't have white cards, you can always use small pieces of paper, and even better, the Scroop technique is included in Neonce). Remember that players don't have to look at each other's cards!

2. Let's start the Scroop. The first player must place one of his idea-cards face up on the table. Tip: it's recommended to play first the best ideas! Each following player has two options: play a different idea-card, or vote for one of the already played cards. To vote for an idea, players must place one of the cards they still have in hand face down near the idea-card they like. Players can vote for idea-cards played by themselves or other players, and they can vote multiple times for the same idea-cards, as long as they have cards in their hand. Note that after an idea-card has been played, players with the same idea-card in their hand can use that card only for voting (they can use it for voting whichever idea they want).

3. The game goes on until the last player has played the last card. At this point, the idea-card with most votes is the winner, hooray!

Example

Sarah, John, Francesco and Paolo are running a brainstorming session for finding the name of their next groundbreaking app. They have created 20 interesting names, and they decide to use the Scroop technique to select the best one. Each player creates a deck of 5 cards starting from the 20 names produced during brainstorming. Sarah is the first player, so she must play an idea-card. She chooses to play "Flydeas". John is the second player, he can play a new idea-card or use a card to vote for "Flydeas". He plays a new card, "Lightful". Francesco plays third, he has in his deck the idea-card "Lightful", so from now on he can use this card only as a vote. He plays a new idea, "Brainchilli". Then it's the turn of Paolo, who plays the idea-card "Neonce". Now the second round starts. Sarah has some of the already played idea-cards in her deck, so she can use these cards just for voting. She decided to play another idea-card, "Fyraa". John thinks that it's time for voting, so he places one of his idea-cards face down near "Lightful". Francesco uses one of his cards to vote for "Lightful" too, Paolo votes for "Neonce" and the second round is over. The game goes on until the fifth round, in which all the players must use their last card. At the end of the game, "Neonce" ha received 5 votes, "Lightful" 4 votes, while "Flydeas", "Brainchilli" and "Fyraa" received 2 votes each. So it is decided, the new app's name is Neonce!