The power of affinity diagrams
What is it?
Affinity diagram (or, as I lovingly call it, the ‘Infinity diagram’) is a way to organise and group data for further analysis and action. It can be done by one person or as a group activity.
I created my first affinity diagram as part of my UX Design Diploma. Hopefully this article will be helpful if you’re new to the concept.
How I did it
As usual, I started with some research — what affinity diagrams are, best practice, examples and top tips.
I’ve found the NNGroup resource to be very useful:
Affinity Diagramming: Collaborate, Sort and Prioritize UX Ideas
Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas
I have then set up a Miro board, compiled all my research data gathered during my previous projects and shared all this with another person who agreed to help me create my diagram.
I did have to buy this person a pizza so be ready to give your peers a reward for helping you
Whilst they were adding their post-it notes on the board, I’ve added my notes on a separate board. I kept my post-it notes on a separate board so they don’t influence thoughts and ideas of my peer.
Once all the prep was done, I have arranged a video call and we created the diagram remotely.
After I explained the task, we started discussing each post-it and allocating it accordingly.
Once all post-it notes where categorised, we moved on to creating subcategories.
Then I added finishing touches (providing a title, creating a Key, amending colours where needed, labelling post-it notes where appropriate):
Challenges and lessons
Firstly, the advice on creating affinity diagrams available from different sources has significant differences and it’s difficult to understand what the actual best practice is. It was also quite generic and provided little guidance in terms of what should be added on the board.
Some sources talked about ‘any pieces of data’ or ‘ideas’. Some, ‘observations’. So perhaps, what you add on the board really depends on your goals and what you want to get from this exercise.
Another challenge was structuring and categorising post-it notes. Again, I recieved some conflicting advice on this. Some advised not to prepare any categories in advance and let them develop naturally during the meeting. However, the NNgroup article suggests creating some categories in advance to get you started. During the call, we moved back-forth a little bit with categories and they did change eventually. I decided to remove ‘Heuristics’, for example, as it was too high-level so post-it notes were reallocated.
Lesson 1. Looking back, I’d say creating a few starter categories would help to get the meeting started.
Another difficulty was around categorising post-it notes. It was difficult to either choose a category or create a meaningful category in places. My hope is that with practice, this will become easier and more straightforward. One thing that was clear, is that categories such as ‘Home page’ or ‘Filter and search’ where more helpful than ‘Mental model’ because they were more practical.
Lesson 2. Categories should help you solve your problem or help with the next step of your project.
At the preparation stage I didn’t pay too much attention at the colour of post-it notes. However, later I realised the value of having some colour-coding structure. You may want to revisit the source of your finding/data in the future. So knowing where this data is coming from is very handy.
Lesson 3. Create a colour code structure to help you identify the source of your data.
Quotes, quotes, quotes
I didn’t appreciate enough the value of including user quotes. I am glad I added a lot of quotes into my diagram and I wish I added even more. With every project I realise the value of having direct user quotes embedded into my projects. My next project — creating a customer journey — will require using quotes too. So they really do matter at every stage of the project.
Application and next steps
Coming from the training and development background, with every new discovery I ask myself ‘Can this be used in training?’. I can clearly see how affinity diagrams can be used in developing training resources or solving a training-related problem. I’m looking forward to trying this in my work.
As part of the UX Diploma journey, my affinity diagram will help with the next project — creating a customer journey. Now that all my data is sorted, I will take these findings and build the stages of a high-level customer journey.
