A Powerful Tool for Citizens’ Assemblies
Easily and reliably recognize collective opinions within a deliberative process.
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Quickly measure levels of agreement on many ideas.
An equal opportunity, anonymous, and transparent process with instant results.
What are Feedback Frames?
Feedback Frames are simple analog tools for secret score voting on many options. Participants rate each idea by dropping a token in a range of slots that are hidden by a cover, with results later revealed as a visual graph of opinions. Anonymous votes are validated by a tally of corresponding signatures.
Recommended by Experts
Brett Hennig
Co-founder and director of the Sortition Foundation, and author of “The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy”
“I recommend Feedback Frames for any event where participants need to make recommendations among many complex and competing options. The simplicity, transparency and anonymity of the process makes them ideal for citizens’ assemblies.”
Lyn Carson
Associate of the Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance at the University of Canberra, and Research Director for the newDemocracy Foundation
“Feedback Frames are a terrific tool, worthy of widespread use in public deliberations, across cultures and age groups. They are an interactive and fun way of helping people prioritize a multitude of ideas and individual perspectives.”
Dave Meslin
TED speaker and author “Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up”
“Feedback Frames allow a group to accurately collect nuanced data that reflects the diverse opinions in a room.
No other system or tool provides this amount of flexibility, accuracy and convenience.”
Let’s See What We Think!
Voting patterns tell a nuanced story about participants’ opinions on dozen of ideas. From clear consensus, to weak majority acceptance, to disagreement, polarized, confused, and other posibilities. See example results from real meetings
Dotmocracy is Broken
Sticker dot voting is a popular facilitation method, but it’s severely flawed. Problems include the bandwagon effect, vote splitting, choice overload, and how easy it is to cheat.
Feedback Frames use secret score voting to give you reliable results every time.
Low Tech & High Touch
Dropping tokens is fun for participants of all ages. This tactile analog method has no technical barriers to overcome and is a refreshing alternative to screens or paper.
Avoid Groupthink
Secret score voting is anonymous and hidden until revealed, which deters social conformity bias (aka the bandwagon effect and peer pressure) which can be a problem when voting using raised hands or stickers.
Transparent Methodology
The clear process is easy to document and explain. With raw results published meaningfully in photos, anyone can see the group’s opinions, prior to a facilitator’s interpretation and summary.
Use at Any Stage of a Participatory Session
Feedback Frames are not just for final decision-making. Use them anytime you have statements to prioritize, such as:
- Questions to be answered
- Topics to be explored
- Proposals to be recommended
- Concerns to be addressed
- Suggestions to be considered
Not a replacement for quality discussion.
A way to recognize collective opinions between & after discussions.
A Choice Tool for Professional Facilitators
Proud Member of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)
Featured on the Facilitating Public Deliberations Podcast
Part of the Participedia democratic innovations methods collection
Endorsed by the International Association of Facilitators
Support Consensus
Unlike limiting and polarizing yes/no votes, Feedback Frames can record gradients of opinions on an unlimited number of ideas. Results show the strength of all views, while encouraging a focus on shared priorities.
Gather Rich Opinion Data
Recorded results include statements, individual opinions on a 5-point scale or “Not sure”. Optional written comments under ‘Strengths’ and ‘Concerns’ provide insight into the rationales behind opinions. This valuable information can be entered into a spreadsheet for analysis and publishing (including as open data). See example results
A universal tool with shipping around the world! See Pricing
Validated Results
Participant signatures track progress and confirm one vote per person per frame. I.e. the number of signatures on a sheet should equal the number of tokens in the corresponding frame.
Customizable Templates
The rating scale, instructions cover, and statement-signature sheet files can be downloaded, edited and printed in any language, for any topic.
Like Surveys on Sticky Notes
Ask open ended questions for participants to generate ideas (like on sticky-notes), and then immediately rate the ideas on a custom 5-point scale to deliver quantitative results (like a survey).
Part of the Growing Wave of Participatory Democracy Around the World
Citizens’ panels, juries & assemblies (aka mini-publics) are an important democratic innovation to help governments address some of the greatest challenges in our society. This long-form process empowers a randomly selected and representative sample of the community to learn about a policy issue, deliberate in-depth, and identify wise and practical policy solutions. Feedback Frames provide a perfect mechanism for making all participants’ nuanced opinions equally visible, while avoiding social pressure bias.
