The Challenge module has many uses, though one of the most powerful is to encourage ideation within a community. Challenge allows admins to manage and control the process members submit and review ideas based on a prompt through a couple of easy features. Organizing a contest for members to submit their ideas leads to thoughtful responses and dedicated engagement as members promote and advocate for ideas they agree with or created.
How to Run an Ideation Contest
Such contests are easy to run and take moments to update to allow for each step of the ideation process to occur throughout the duration of the contest. The process of an ideation contest starts with a prompt for users to submit their ideas and settings to allow comments on the challenge. This ideation phase has an end date users have been informed of and can be public or private based on whether other members should see and review these ideas, but voting is not allowed yet.
The voting phase starts once the end date for the ideation phase is reached. For the voting phase, allow comments on ideas, vote on ideas, set voting system to liking, and turn off allow adding ideas. With these settings, you ensure members can review, inquire, and vote on the ideas, but no new ideas are being created after the initial deadline. Have another deadline members have been informed of and once reached, review the results and announce a winner of the content based on likes or any other criteria relevant to the goal of the content.
Setting up an Ideation Contest
To start such a contest, you need to have a prompt that is thought-provoking, relevant and aligns with your goals for the community. When you have a prompt, you can create a Challenge. Before launching the Challenge live, you should review that all settings are right for the ideation phase including a scheduled end date, allow adding ideas and allow comments on challenge to on, and vote on ideas to off. Think whether members should be able to review other ideas before submitting their own; if all users should submit unbiased ideas, then turn on hide ideas setting for this Challenge.
When ready to start the voting phase, update the end date for the for the Challenge, turn on allow comments and vote on ideas, and turn off allow adding ideas. Once the contest ends, review the votes received and decide the winner of the content. You are not bound to award the idea with the most votes, but be sure to state this at the start of the contest so members are aware of how a winner is selected. Rewards and any other incentives are optional, but encourage engagement, so be aware of member expectations from the contest.