The Informed Design Cycle

Topic 3. Prioritization Matrix

A prioritization matrix is a useful tool that team members or your users can utilize to achieve consensus about an issue. The matrix helps you rank problems or issues (usually generated through brainstorming) by a particular criterion that is important to your team. This lets you see more clearly which problems are the most important to work on solving first.


The Purpose:
To rank problems or issues (usually generated through brainstorming ) by a particular criterion that is important to your design.

The Procedure:
1. Brainstorm -- Conduct a brainstorming session on problems that users or team members have with your program or service. Go to the Brainstorming tool to learn how to conduct a group brainstorming session.
2. Fill out the prioritization matrix chart with the group. Chart identifies problem, frequency, importance, feasibility and total Points.

Problem
Frequency
Importance
Feasibility
Total Points
         
         
         
         
3. In the first column, write down the problems that were mentioned in the brainstorming session.
4. In the second to fourth columns, define your criteria. Examples of some typical criteria are:
Frequency: How frequent is the problem? Does it occur often or only on rare occasions?

Importance: From the point of view of the users, what are the most important problems? What are the problems that you want to resolve?

Feasibility: How realistic is it that we can resolve the problem? Will it be easy or difficult?

You can choose other criteria if they better fit the situation you are discussing. For example, for a more quantitative comparison, you could use cost, amount of time or other numerical indicators as the criteria. 5. Rank/Vote -- Each participant now votes three times for each criteria. Each participant votes nine times in total.
6. Total all the votes together. The totals help you see clearly how to prioritize the problems.



Go to Topic 4. Problem-Solving Matrix

Back to Description