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What is Affinity Diagramming?

“Creativity begins with an affinity for something….” Howard Gardner.  An Affinity Diagram is a visual tool created that shows the relationships between ideas and observations. It takes information received through observations (seen or heard such as in contextual inquiries), speaking with end users (as in interviews) or via surveys. It is a method of externalizing information; getting that information from you and your team’s minds and into a visual format where it can be analyzed and acted upon.


Why use Affinity Diagramming?

During the problem solving or creative process, information overload can be a very real challenge for designers, project managers or any of the other actors involved in a project or business. When you try to consider too much information at once, mistakes become inevitable and important details are neglected. Affinity Diagramming allows you to record all of the ideas, observations and data you and your team have collected. Thereby freeing up mental space and energy to analyze your findings and make decisions. It also allows you to clearly see patterns, issues and relations that were previously unclear or unnoticed.



Affinity Diagramming helps make sense of large amounts of data by sorting them into meaningful groups. Design research work that uncovers and articulates the (often unmet) needs of individuals and/or groups.  This is a “sense-making” process where objective data is used to identify patterns and anomalies, so observations and judgments may be made to enhance learning.

Find Themes & Insights

  • Use the Walls: As a group, post your sticky notes with all of your findings on the wall (one finding per note)
  • Look for Patterns: Group similar ideas together, move them around on the wall
  • Create clusters: Make them meaningful
  • Capture Insights: Put a different color sticky note above each group with the key insights you find

 

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