A hill of beans

When something amounts to a hill of beans, it usually has little or no meaning.

This past Saturday, a hill of beans counted for everything! I have judged several design shows using all sorts of voting methods including: open discussion, grading, post it tabs, thumbs up/thumbs down, points, etc. But this past weekend while judging the STA Chicago's Design Archive, we used beans.

An upside down cup with a flap cut into the bottom was placed be each entry. If you wanted to vote it in, you dropped a bean. If not, you walked on by (Just walk on by, thank you Dionne Warwick). There was this whole thing about recusing yourself and dropping in a different bean, but that is neither here nor there.

I was surprised that in the end, the old fashion, no frills method selected a solid body of work from all the submissions.

Mmm? The elections are coming up! Imagine the ease and simplicity of beans!