What Made for a Smoother Discussion When Creating an Affinity Diagram
As a beginner in UX, the concept of affinity diagramming seemed daunting after my initial encounter with it during a social design project for sustainable clothing. However, with a fresh opportunity to delve into this method again, this time around, the process felt remarkably smoother. Reflecting on the experience, I discerned several key factors that contributed to the efficiency of our affinity diagramming discussions.
1. Align how the relations between different themes should be
Management consulting often emphasizes a Mutually Exclusive and collective exhaustive (MECE) framework. In my previous project, we clustered the data inductively but still wanted to follow this principle. After clustering, we identified themes such as “User’s viewpoint on second-hand clothing” and “User’s viewpoint on sustainability”. We also discovered themes related to pain points in the user's journey of buying clothes and recycling clothing. However, developing an MECE framework that accommodates all these themes was challenging. This caused the team to feel frustrated and start to doubt whether this diagram was beneficial.
During that period, it slipped our minds that the main focus should be understanding users’ needs rather than creating a meticulously organized MECE framework.
It is totally acceptable to have themes that are not MECE.
This mindset shift has made the process more agile, prevented the team from spending too much time and feeling frustrated, and has helped the team maintain confidence in the value of the affinity diagram, avoiding the skepticism that had undermined the previous project I worked on
Not adhering strictly to MECE also allowed us to explore observations and interview data that might not neatly fit into predefined categories. This flexibility enables us to capture nuanced insights that might have been overlooked in a more rigid framework.
2. Share the Post-its turn by turn based on relevancy
When grouping the post-its, we should first refer to the previous contributor’s content and identify relevant post-its related to that theme. For example, when someone mentions “a type of customers always stick to their shopping list,” they can first suggest related post-its, such as “for those who shop collectively with friends, they use iCloud to co-edit their shopping list,” instead of immediately creating another new theme. This would help accelerate the discussion.
3. When creating a new theme, remember that the name can be changed and adjusted later
It’s unnecessary to come up with a perfect name from the start, and this fluid and adaptable approach saves time arguing over the name for a theme — usually, we would know how to name it better when more notes are added under that theme. By emphasizing the adjustability of these names, we were liberated from the pressure of perfection. This was especially beneficial for non-native speakers, who might struggle to craft perfect names initially.
