25 July 2007

Doodle: Scheduling meetings

I realise that Doodle has been around for a while but having recently had the chance to use it, I can see now why it is such a brilliant little thing. All it does is polls. That's it. Plain and simple. And it does it well, without needing any fancy bells and whistles.

The interface is based on a simple grid and the results are shown as poll totals for each option at the bottom.

A poll, as a decision making tool, is great when you have a small selection of answers. I believe 3 is optimum. Anything significantly larger will probably make your life as poll organiser more difficult because, if there is lack of polarisation in the results, it will be difficult to come to a conclusion. Fine if you're doing a general opinion survey, but bad if you're relying on the poll to make a decision. See this example to see what I mean.

Still, Doodle is one tool that's going to stay in my toolbox.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

on Doodle - when you check a box for meeting invitation - are you checking the times you are avaialable, or the times you are not avilable?