Traffic Lights: a fast pulse check
When you need a temperature read on a room without stopping for a full question, Traffic Lights gives people exactly three buttons: green, yellow, red.
This slide is built for the moment where you need an answer in under five seconds and don't want to slow the room down explaining what a scale means. In a classroom, "How confident do you feel with this material so far?" told through three colors is something even the quietest student will tap without hesitation. In a workshop, it works as a running check-in between agenda items: green to keep going, yellow to slow down, red to stop and address something before moving on. Because there's no scale to interpret and no text to type, it's the lowest-friction interaction in the entire library — which also means it trades away nuance. A yellow from ten different people can mean ten different things.
If you want that lost nuance back — the difference between a 6 and an 8, not just "kind of okay" — use Scales instead, which asks the same kind of question but on a numeric range participants actually choose a value on.
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Add the slide
Select New Slide → Traffic Lights under Interaction.
Coming Soon · ScreenshotThe slide type picker with Traffic Lights highlighted under the Interaction group.
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Frame the check-in
Fill in the Question field with what green, yellow, and red should mean for this moment — "How confident do you feel with this material so far?" is a natural fit.
Coming Soon · ScreenshotThe Traffic Lights editor with the Question field focused and a sample confidence-check prompt entered.
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Optionally relabel each color
If green/yellow/red on its own is ambiguous for your prompt, add short labels under each color — like "Got it," "Mostly," and "Lost" — so the meaning is unmistakable at a glance.
Coming Soon · ScreenshotThe optional label fields under each of the three Traffic Lights colors, with short custom labels entered.
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Present and read the split instantly
The green/yellow/red breakdown updates live as taps come in, giving you a read on the room in seconds rather than minutes.
Coming Soon · ScreenshotA Traffic Lights results view showing the live green/yellow/red breakdown as a split bar.
Run it every 15–20 minutes to catch confusion before it snowballs — it's fast enough that repeating it doesn't cost the session any real time.
This or That and Traffic Lights share the same low-friction philosophy — stacking two or three of them back-to-back makes for a quick pulse-check sequence at the start of a session or between agenda items.
Frequently asked questions
Does Traffic Lights show individual votes or just the aggregate?
The results view shows the aggregate green/yellow/red split rather than who picked what, which keeps the check-in low-pressure for participants.
Can I use more or fewer than three colors?
No — Traffic Lights is fixed at exactly three options. If you need a different number of choices, use Multiple Choice instead.
Can I change what green, yellow, and red mean partway through a session?
Each Traffic Lights slide has its own question and optional labels, so if the meaning needs to change, add a new slide rather than editing the meaning mid-session.