How to Run a Competition with QR Codes
Every contestant gets a QR code at their stand. Visitors scan it, score them on the same criteria as everyone else, and a private jury leaderboard ranks the field live.
Key Concept
Each contestant is a live poll in PollQR. A competition is not one big form. It is a group of live polls, one per contestant, all scored on the same set of rating questions and ranked against each other.
That is why the order in which you create it matters. First, take an example competitor. Get the ranking/scoring poll for it exactly right, add it to the competition, and then -- and only then -- duplicate it. Every copy inherits both the criteria and the competition link, so the scores stay comparable and you never edit the same question dozens of times. You merely duplicate the original one for each contestant and rename it. PollQR and the leaderboard do the rest.
Step by step
1
Create the competition
Give it a name your judges will recognise. You get a private jury link right away, before you have added a single contestant. Setting all of this up is free.
2
Build your first contestant as a live poll
Each contestant is one live poll. Name the poll after the contestant, then add a rating question for every judging criterion.
You can have several questions in one poll, and you should. A chili cook-off might rate Heat, Flavour, and Presentation; a partner showcase might rate Originality, Business Value, and Demo Quality. Each rating question becomes its own column on the leaderboard. Keep the criteria broad enough to apply to every contestant, because everyone gets scored on the same ones.
3
Add that first poll to the competition
Come back to your competition and pick the poll you just built. That is what links it to the leaderboard.
Do this before you duplicate. It is the whole trick of the next step.
4
Duplicate the poll for every other contestant
Open your first contestant's poll, choose Duplicate, and rename the copy. Repeat once per remaining contestant.
The judging criteria and the competition membership both carry over to every copy. That is why it is worth getting the first poll exactly right first: fix a criterion once, before duplicating, instead of thirteen times afterwards. Duplicates do not use poll credits.
5
Weight the criteria, if you want to
Every criterion counts equally until you say otherwise. If one matters more, give it a heavier weight and the leaderboard recalculates.
You can also set a minimum number of votes before a score counts as firm, so a contestant with two votes is not shown as beating one with two hundred.
6
Choose what voters see
After each vote, an attendee lands on a checklist showing which contestants they have scored and which they have left. No scores appear on it. You control what else is on that screen.
7
Print a QR code for every contestant
Download the print pack: one page per contestant, with the name printed above the code.
The name and the code print together on purpose. The common failure at an event is a code ending up at the wrong stand, and printing them together makes that visible before anyone tapes anything down.
8
Open voting
Opening starts every contestant at once. This is the point where a competition pass is charged; everything before it is free.
You can close voting and reopen it as often as you need. Reopening does not charge you again.
9
Watch the board, then freeze it
The jury link shows a live ranked leaderboard that anyone holding the link can open, so treat it like a password. Freeze the board before you announce.
Freezing excludes any vote cast after that moment, so the standings you read out cannot shift while you are reading them.
What voters see, and what you control
Scanning a stand's code opens that contestant's scoring screen. After the vote, the attendee lands on a checklist of the whole field, showing what they have scored and what they have left. Scores are never shown to attendees. Four things on that screen are yours to set:
A message above the list
Write your own instructions in your own words. Use it to set the rules: how many stands someone needs to visit, or what to do when they are finished.
Whether the list links to ballots
Off by default. The names are plain text, so scoring only happens by scanning the code at the stand. That is usually the point of running a competition: you want people walking the floor. Turn it on only if you actually want attendees scoring everyone from one chair.
A floor map
Attach a PDF map and attendees get a link to it, so someone who cannot find a stand has somewhere to look.
A scorecard code for your reception desk
One QR code for the whole event that opens the scanner's own checklist. Useful if you are giving a prize for visiting enough stands, since staff can see how many someone has scored.
Set it up before you pay
Building a competition, adding contestants, and printing the codes are all free. A competition pass is charged when you open voting, priced by how many contestants you have.