Word cloud

Find out what a room is actually thinking.

A poll can only offer the answers you thought of in advance. A word cloud takes free text from every phone and sizes each word by how often it comes back, so the room tells you what it thinks in its own words.

Good for the questions you cannot pre-answer

Openers, temperature checks, and anything where the interesting answer is the one nobody on the organising team predicted.

  • One word or a short phrase

    Ask for a single word and the cloud stays readable from the back of the room. Ask for a phrase and you get sentiment instead of vocabulary. Both work, they answer different questions.

  • Repetition is the whole signal

    Size is frequency. If nine people type the same word it dominates, and that is usually the finding. A ranked list of one-off answers tells you far less.

  • Colour carries variety, not meaning

    Words take colours from the activity palette so a dense cloud stays legible. No word means anything by virtue of its colour, and none of it is required to read the result.

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Ideas that tend to work

Opening a conference

“One word for what you want to leave with today.” Answers give the MC something real to react to in the first two minutes.

Middle of a lecture

“What is still unclear?” You find the gap while there is time to close it, not in the exam.

Team retro

“One word for this sprint.” Anonymous, so you hear from the people who would not have said it out loud.

Hackathon kickoff

“What are you building?” The cloud becomes a map of the room and helps teams find each other.

Product workshop

“What do customers complain about most?” Frequency does the prioritising for you.

Closing a session

“One word for how you feel now.” Run the same question you opened with and show both.

Questions people ask about word clouds

Can I moderate what appears?
The social wall activity is the moderated one: nothing reaches the screen until you approve it. A word cloud is designed to be immediate, so use the social wall when you need approval before display.
Is it anonymous?
Submissions are not attributed on screen. That is what makes people answer honestly, which is the reason to run one.
Do similar words get grouped?
Words are counted as they are submitted. Asking for a single lowercase word in the prompt is the reliable way to keep the cloud tidy.
Can people submit more than once?
Yes, and for a word cloud that is usually what you want: someone with three things on their mind should be able to say all three.
Can I export the responses?
Yes. Every activity in a session exports to CSV alongside the rest of the event.

Keep reading

Live polls

When you do know the options and you want a number.

Q&A with upvotes

When the room should be asking the questions instead of answering them.

Word clouds in class

Using them as a comprehension check mid-lecture.

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