How It Works
You create a competition, then give every entry its own live poll with the same scoring criteria. Each entry gets its own QR code. Print the codes, put one at each table or booth, and open voting.
Visitors scan the code in front of them, score that entry from 1 to 5 on each criterion, and move on. It takes about fifteen seconds. Voters need no app and no account.
Every score feeds one private leaderboard. Your jury opens a single link and watches the field ranked in order, updating every few seconds as votes arrive.
Applications: Where Audience Scoring Works Best
- Science fairs. Every project gets a code on its board. Every visitor can score it, so students hear from the whole room.
- Hackathons and demo days. Teams demo at their tables during the expo hour. The audience-choice award is settled by the time the last demo ends.
- Conference booth competitions. Partners or exhibitors each show what they built. Visitors score at the booth, while the demo is fresh.
- Pitch competitions. Score each founder on the criteria you choose: clarity, originality, market fit.
- Art shows and craft fairs. A people's-choice award drawn from everyone who walked through.
- Chilli cook-offs and bake-offs. Many entries, many tasters, one ranking, and no arithmetic at the end.
- Internal innovation days. Teams present what they built during the quarter, and the whole company scores.
Up to Five Criteria, Scored 1 to 5
Every entry is scored on the same criteria, so the numbers compare. You pick up to five and write them yourself.
Build the first entry's poll, then use Duplicate once per remaining entry. Duplicating copies the questions exactly. Reword one entry's criteria and its scores stop comparing with the rest.
Tip: Print the entry name with its QR code. Codes end up at the wrong table often enough to guard against, and a printed name catches it before anyone tapes anything down. The print pack does this: one page per entry, name above the code.
The Jury Board
The leaderboard is a single link you send to your jury. Treat it like a password. Send it directly and keep it off shared slides.
The board shows each entry's rank, its overall score out of 5, its score on each criterion, and how many people voted for it. It refreshes every five seconds by default, and whoever is watching can change that or scale the text up for a big screen.
Voters see a thank-you screen. They never see the totals. When voters can see who is winning, early votes steer later ones, and contestants spend the afternoon watching their own standing.
Vote Counts Belong Next to Scores
A quiet table with six generous scores can outrank a busy table with two hundred honest ones.
So the board shows vote counts beside every score, and you can set a minimum. Entries below your threshold are marked Provisional. Your jury then knows which numbers carry weight.
You can also weight criteria if some matter more than others, and freeze scoring at a cutoff so the ranking cannot shift while you walk to the microphone.
What It Does Not Do
Voting is anonymous and lightly protected. PollQR marks a device after it votes and blocks a second vote for the same entry from that device. It does not identify people. Someone who clears their browser data can vote again.
We chose that. Blocking by network address or device fingerprint turns away real voters at events, because venue WiFi puts hundreds of phones behind one address and identical phone models look identical to a browser. Counting every genuine voter is worth letting a few duplicates through.
Audience scoring measures what a room thinks. If your competition awards a prize of real value, put a jury in charge of the decision and use the audience score as evidence.
Getting Started
Competitions are sold per event, not by subscription. Setting one up is free: you buy a pass when you open voting, priced by how many entries you have. Pro members pay less on every pass.
From your dashboard, open Competitions, create one, and give it a name your jury will recognise. Build the first entry's poll with your criteria and check the wording. Duplicate it once per entry, download the print pack, and open voting on the morning. Setup takes about half an hour the first time.
Scan a code yourself and cast a test vote before doors open. It takes a minute and catches a poll left closed or a code printed from the wrong entry.
Tip: Do a dry run with a few colleagues and three fake entries. Half an hour beforehand surfaces the venue WiFi problems that planning does not.