- Team members will write down their ideas or facts all on different sticky notes
- In a usability session: team members write down observations, ideas, or findings on different sticky notes
- In an ideation workshop: attendees write down each idea on a separate sticky note

Generating Sticky Notes

- Sort notes into top-level categories
- Sort each category into subcategories
- Summarize the categories (Present)
- Determine priorities

Steps to Organizing Sticky Notes

- Find a room that has walls where the sticky notes can be placed
- Think of a few categories to help facilitate sorting during the meeting
- Add a "?" category for notes that are not understandable

Before the Meeting

- Before the meeting
- Generating sticky notes
- Organizing the sticky notes into groups

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Affinity Diagramming refers to the process of organizing related facts, ideas, or observations into distinct categories.

Affinity Diagramming

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/affinity-diagram/ 

"Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas" (Kara Pernice)

Steps in the Affinity Diagramming Process

- For ideation workshops, ideas will often be sorted by the team after they are generated, all within the same workshop
- For organizing research findings, team members can choose to sort the notes after each participant's interview/test session and again after all the sessions are done  

Variations in the Affinity Diagramming Process

Affinity diagramming is primarily used by teams for organizing:
- Observations or ideas from a research study
- Ideas that surface in design-ideation meetings
- Ideas about UX strategy and vision

Uses of Affinity Diagramming

- Software (CAQDAS)
- Journaling
- Affinity Diagram Techniques 


Learn Before

Related

Learn After