Types of participatory methods
Participatory Planning
Collective Rube Goldberg Machine
Collective Rube Goldberg Machine is a participatory activity where teams collaboratively build a whimsical chain reaction device to perform a simple task, using creativity, problem-solving, and everyday materials to spark teamwork and fun experimentation.
Community Planting Day
Community Planting Day is a participatory dynamic where a group comes together to plant vegetation in a shared space, promoting environmental awareness, social connection, and collective responsibility.
Confidence Vote
Community Garden
Community garden is a participatory activity in which neighbors, students, or community groups come together to create and care for a garden in a shared space. Through collaborative work, they grow food, exchange knowledge, and strengthen their connection with the environment and the community.
Make a Wish
Make a Wish is a participatory dynamic in which a community identifies meaningful wishes or needs that can be addressed collectively, votes on one of them, and organizes collaborative actions to make it come true, gathering support from individuals, organizations, and local businesses.
Art Trail
Art Trail is a collaborative activity in which participants intervene in a public or community space through collective artistic actions, aiming to reframe and transform it into a unique, meaningful, and shared place for the community.
Heat Map Voting
Heat Map Voting is a visual and collaborative technique for prioritizing key aspects within a set of ideas by distributing multiple votes across specific elements.
Anticipating Challenges
Anticipating Challenges is a participatory activity in which teams imagine that their project has failed and analyze the possible reasons behind this scenario.
Circular Conversations
Circular Conversations is a group activity that combines movement and interaction to foster meaningful connections among participants.
The Ladder of Abstraction
The Ladder of Abstraction is an activity that guides participants in reframing problems through both expansive and specific approaches, fostering strategic and innovative solutions.
How Might We (HMW)
How Might We is a Design Sprint methodology that transforms pain points into positive, collaborative questions, guiding the team toward creative solutions.
Flowchart
Flowchart is a collaborative technique that allows participants to analyze cause-effect relationships within a central topic, identify “critical knots,” and assign responsibilities for strategic planning.
The Nine Questions Technique
The Nine Questions Technique is a participatory methodology that provides a comprehensive structure for designing, planning, or evaluating projects. It promotes collective reflection and collaborative work by addressing all essential aspects of a project in an integrated way.
Dot Voting
Dot Voting is a participatory technique that combines analysis and prioritization to identify the most relevant proposals within a collective process, promoting collaboration and group consensus.
Paper Airplanes
Paper Airplane Creation is a collaborative activity that simulates strategic decision-making through building and launching paper airplanes, illustrating how choices impact collective outcomes.
Situationist Drift
The Situationist Drift invites participants to explore urban spaces freely and subjectively, fostering creativity and critical reflection on the environment.
SMART Goal-Setting Workshop
El Taller de redacción de objetivos SMART enseña a los participantes a formular metas claras y efectivas mediante la reflexión y colaboración.
Root Cause Analysis
Root Cause Analysis uses the fishbone diagram to identify the main causes of a problem and promote effective solutions.
The Ideal Leader
The Ideal Leader allows for the collective construction of an effective leadership profile, fostering reflection and group alignment.
Now, Next, Later
Now, Next, Later organizes tasks based on their temporal priority to promote clarity, focus, and efficiency in planning.
Impact vs. Effort Matrix
The Impact vs. Effort Matrix helps prioritize actions and decisions by evaluating them based on their impact and required effort, promoting efficiency and effectiveness.
Collaborative Benchmarking
Collaborative Benchmarking promotes continuous improvement through comparative analysis and the adaptation of successful practices to one's own context.
Activity clock
The Activity clock invites participants to organize and balance their daily time through an effective visual representation.
Backward Planning
La Planificación retroactiva ayuda a identificar los pasos necesarios para lograr un objetivo trabajando desde el resultado final hacia el presente, promoviendo la estrategia y la claridad grupal.
Ordering the sequence
Ordering the Sequence helps organize milestones or events within a process, promoting collaborative analysis and visual understanding.
Daily Standup Meeting
Decision maze
The Decision maze guides participants through paths and challenges that simulate real decision-making processes, promoting critical and collaborative learning.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming fosters collective creativity and collaboration by generating multiple proposals to address a specific challenge.
Wheel of common interests
The Common Interests Wheel connects participants through hobbies and affinities, promoting interaction and establishing foundations for future group collaborations.
Treasure Hunt
The Treasure Hunt combines teamwork and challenge-solving to promote active learning and collaboration in an engaging, game-based format.
Skills Mosaic
Skills Mosaic is a participatory activity that helps teams identify and visualize their collective strengths, fostering collaboration, trust, and mutual recognition.
Creative Stations
Creative Stations combine rotating and participatory activities to explore a topic from multiple perspectives, fostering creativity and active learning.
Concept Route
The Concept Route organizes and connects key ideas through a collaborative visual journey, facilitating learning and the communication of complex topics.
Collaborative Competition
Collaborative Competition is an activity that combines teamwork with problem-solving in a friendly, competitive format to foster creativity and learning.
Challenge-Based Learning
Challenge-Based Learning connects learning with action by engaging participants in concrete problems that they must collaboratively solve.
Local Connections Map
The Local Connections Map is a participatory tool for identifying and analyzing existing networks within an environment, promoting collaboration and strengthening key relationships.
Collective Questionnaire
The Collective Questionnaire is a participatory dynamic that enables the collaborative design of key questions, ensuring their relevance and usefulness for the project's or research’s purpose.
Bottleneck Analysis
The Bottleneck Analysis is a participatory tool for identifying and addressing recurring obstacles in a project, optimizing processes, and promoting effective collaboration.
Chronological Review
The Chronological Review is a participatory activity that analyzes progress by comparing it to the planned timeline, promoting adjustments and reflections to ensure the project's success.
Thematic Committees
Thematic Committees are working groups that analyze specific proposals in key areas, promoting informed and strategic decisions through active participation and collaboration.
Benefit Map
The Benefit Map is a visual tool that connects projects with the positive impacts they generate, helping to prioritize actions and maximize results in participatory contexts.
Community Auction
The Community Auction is an activity where projects symbolically compete for resources, fostering collective evaluation and critical analysis of priorities.
Investment Roulette
Investment Roulette is an activity that assigns proposals to random categories, fostering creativity, strategic analysis, and collective decision-making.
Affinity diagram
The Affinity Diagram is a visual and participatory tool that organizes ideas into categories to facilitate group analysis and informed decision-making.
Creation of instructional resources
The Creation of instructional resources is a participatory activity that allows participants to design educational tools while consolidating their learning and developing creative skills.
Feature prioritization
Feature prioritization is a participatory exercise designed to identify and organize the key elements of a project or design, ensuring a focus on the most relevant and viable aspects.
Inquiry Workshop
Discover how the Inquiry Workshop fosters critical thinking and collective exploration by generating key questions that guide research, project design, and problem analysis.
Project bank
The Project Bank is a participatory activity for presenting, evaluating, and prioritizing proposals, fostering collaborative resource allocation and the strategic development of ideas.
Interaction map
The Interaction map is a visual activity that enables participants to identify and analyze key relationships within a system to make informed decisions.
Future scenarios
The Future Scenarios activity allows participants to imagine different development possibilities to anticipate risks, seize opportunities, and generate innovative ideas.
Learning puzzle
The Learning puzzle is an activity where participants learn and teach parts of a topic to collectively build a comprehensive understanding.
Collaborative mind map
The Collaborative mind map is a visual tool that allows groups to explore, organize, and connect ideas on a topic in a creative and participatory way.
Evaluation wheel
The Evaluation wheel is a visual and participatory tool that allows for the evaluation and reflection on different aspects of a project or activity, facilitating collective analysis and improvement planning.
Investor role-playing
Investor role-playing is a strategic and engaging activity that simulates resource allocation to collectively evaluate and prioritize proposals.
Impact and feasibility scale
The Impact and feasibility scale is a participatory tool for evaluating proposals based on their potential benefit and ease of implementation, promoting strategic and consensus-driven decisions.
Ideas marketplace
The Ideas marketplace is a participatory activity that simulates a market where participants collectively decide how to allocate a budget among various ideas or projects.
Risk mapping
Risk mapping is a visual and participatory tool for identifying and analyzing threats and vulnerabilities in a specific area or context, fostering collective strategies for prevention and response.
Participatory SWOT Analysis
Participatory SWOT Analysis is a collaborative tool used to identify and connect strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats to design collective strategies.
Intergenerational Dialogue
Promote understanding and collaboration across generations with Intergenerational Dialogue, a dynamic activity that fosters empathy, mutual learning, and shared solutions by exploring diverse experiences, values, and perspectives.
Perception Scale
Engage participants with Perception Scales, a dynamic tool to capture and analyze diverse views, fostering reflection and group insights for actionable outcomes.
Problem Chain
The Problem Chain is a visual and collaborative tool to identify, analyze, and connect the causes and effects of a problem, building strategic solutions.
Forum Theater
Engage in Forum Theater, a participatory method to explore social issues through performance. Empower communities, foster creative solutions, and promote collective action.
Narrative workshop
Engage in a Narrative workshop to share stories, foster empathy, and build collective solutions. Ideal for team building, reflection, and creative problem-solving.
Solution tree
Solution tree is a collaborative activity to analyze problems, identify root causes, and develop actionable solutions. Ideal for fostering teamwork, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving.