Affinity Diagramming and Diagnostic Mapping

After our interviews with stakeholders, we have conducted affinity diagramming and diagnostic mapping to help us identify possible problems and insights from the qualitative data. These are low-cost and effective ways of making sense of the current situation and of generating design ideas.

Affinity Diagramming

For our affinity diagramming process, we have first printed out the quotes from our semi-structured stakeholder interviews and attached them to post-it notes. These quotes will support our insights.

We have chosen post-it notes of two different colors to represent the quotes from the two different stakeholders. This practice will allow us to see clearly if an issue is specific to one stakeholder.

As we are sticking these post-it notes to the blackboard, the groups with similar issues gradually start to bubble up. We then used another color to summarize the main issue from each group. We also tried to explore the connection between the groups by linking them — creating a semi-concept map.

Diagnostic Mapping

From our affinity diagram, we have identified that the problems from the maker space course mainly come from the following four categories: poor documentation, lack of useful feedback, the difficulty of assessment, and the difficulty of showcasing. We used diagnostic mapping to analyze these problems. This is an abductive process of suggesting explanations of these problems and possible solutions to them.

We started by creating a diagnostic map of poor documentation on a whiteboard, taking the issues bubbled up from the affinity diagram. In the diagnostic map, we try to explain the causes, consequences, and ideas for solutions.

We continued our diagnostic mapping in Figma and generated the following diagnostic maps.

Insights

From these diagnostic maps, we have found that many of these problems are interrelated. For example, poor documentation will lead to difficulties in showcasing, and thus lead to a lack of formal and insightful feedback. This diagnostic mapping process helped us to find the point of intervention. We are also planning to bring these maps to our stakeholders and hold co-design sessions in order to make sure we are on the same page and gather feedback & potential design ideas.