For our Define stage’s additional design method, the team used affinity mapping to organize our observations from interviews.
Affinity mapping is used to organize large sets of ideas or information into clusters. In the design world, affinity maps, or diagrams, are tools to analyze research findings or sort design ideas. Instead of having individual employees summarize reports of research or ideas, this exercise helps engage the whole team by having people openly discuss what is on the diagram. People have an interactive map to point out, move, and discuss the relevance of an idea to the categories created. It also creates order among the often chaotic number of insights found in research and interviews, or the number of design solutions created in ideation sessions. The process begins after everyone writes out their individual findings. Then, as a team, people sort the insights or ideas into top-level categories, then subcategories.
While my previous experience with affinity mapping was with a whiteboard and a rainbow collection of sticky notes, it was interesting to do the same exercise in a virtual setting through Miro.
There are many advantages to this design method. First, it helps the team thoroughly go through each insight/idea and discuss its significance. Otherwise, the team might generally go over each member’s summary of insights, and possibly neglect important pieces of information. Furthermore, while discussing each sticky note, there is a creative potential for more insights and ideas. Finally, the main advantage is that through this exercise, the team reaches a consensus on how they interpret their information.
Some disadvantages include a need for many insights or ideas, and a need for a diverse group of sticky notes to group into separate categories. Without either, the map becomes either many categories with very few sticky notes in each, or very few categories, or both. This exercise is also time-consuming since each sticky note must be discussed and placed in its appropriate category.
The affinity map is particularly useful for identifying sticky notes that affect multiple areas since such ideas/insights would be placed in various categories. The diagram can also identify the significance of each category by noticing the number of insights/ideas in it compared to the other categories.
I wholeheartedly recommend affinity mapping because it is fun to go through and organize our thoughts — not to mention satisfying! Not to mention, while it is time-consuming, the advantages and resulting discussion are worthwhile.
Finally, some tips for affinity mapping are to do it as soon as possible after an ideation session or after interviews are completed, when memories are fresh. If we had done this exercise more than two weeks after we finished interviews, I know that our team would not have been able to garner as many insights from our interviews. I also recommend using colorful sticky notes so that it’s more visually appealing. Different colors could be used either for each person (easier during discussion), or for each category (easier to observe categories).