Comparing notes

What is it?

Visually sorting and prioritising a large amount of information about a problem.

What is it useful for?

When presented with many pieces of information, it's not always obvious where to start. Sorting and grouping these ideas in order is often the best way to begin.

How can I do it?

1. Write all of your ideas on individual sticky notes.
2. Reduce the number of notes by rejecting low priority items and combining notes that deal with similar things.
3. Compare pairs of notes in turn and put the most important one higher up the list (using the same criteria for all comparisons).
4. When no more swaps can be made, the list will be in order of importance.

For example, if you wanted to determine the most important factors in choosing a pushchair you could take all the potential considerations from your research (or brainstorm them) and then compare notes to determine the most important considerations. This method also works for ranking things other than by importance, for instance in order of speed, cost, quality or desirability.

You could also use this method with users to get them to put their considerations in order of importance, for example, "What are the most important considerations connected with buying a new home?".