A short review of an app that was used to brainstorm ideas during OGP Summit in Paris.

Find out more about the summit here.

Links: Toguna for Android; Toguna for Iphone

Benefits:

1. If your audience has smartphones and access to quality wifi, then installing + learning to use Toguna would take around 1 minute.

2. Toguna is easy to install and its usability is quite intuitive.
Toguna it useful if you need to receive some general feedback from your audience over certain idea/issue/problem – it is very easy for everyone to share their feedback and vote (like/dislike) on the ideas of others. You would also get a general sense on what might be potential solutions to some problem.

3. It’s a good way to engage your audience if your event does not allow for much time for audience to ask questions/participate in discussion

Limits:

1. As an idea crowdsourcing too it is simplistic – the design of the app provileges shorter ideas over those that require more text.

2. Even though theoretically people can comment on each idea, in reality this option is not being used (again: because of design of the app which privileges sharing ever-new ideas and voting of ideas on others).

3. In none of the three Toguna discussions( that took place during OGP Summit) the idea that was voted to be the most popular had been particularly innovative or enlightening.

Overall, Toguna a decent app but it encounters the same issues as other crowd brainstorming platforms that I’m aware of: 1) form dominates over considerations of quality content (simplicity for the sake of simplicity); 2) assumption that crowd-voting (rather than epertise) is a good way of discerning between good and bad ideas.